Priya Mohan Sinha, 'Yeh Dil Mange More' man, is no more

One of the high points in former PepsiCo India chief Priya Mohan Sinha’s career was when he spent around Rs 10 crore on a guerrilla marketing campaign that said Nothing Official About It. The campaign was meant to neutralise Coca-Cola’s Rs 10 crore sponsorship of the 1997 Cricket World Cup.

Former PepsiCo India Chairman Priya Mohan Sinha, Suman to his friends, passed away on Wednesday. He often said he loved three things, all of which were in Kolkata. An early morning walk past the gothic monument at Prinsep Ghat, a ride in a country boat on the Hooghly, and a walk down Park Street, the city’s happening hotspot brimming with restaurants, bars, and books. “These are my roots. This is what I want to do when I settle in Calcutta after retirement,” he told me. He loved Calcutta and refused to call it Kolkata.

And then, almost instantly, he asked me at his expansive Gurgaon home: “Which club do you belong to?” I thought I would first say Manchester United as PepsiCo had once sponsored the club. But within seconds, I changed tack and replied: “East Bengal.”

That was Sinha, very earthy and one of the most respected CEOs of his time. He never lacked the human touch. Whenever Sinha bought gifts for his friends or business associates, it reflected their individual interests. It could be a golf kit, a cricket bat, or a clock mounted in a case with blue crystals, and so on.

Sinha knew the importance of the CEO’s chair at Pepsico India, and he also knew about life without the chair. He had purged a lot of inefficiency at Pepsi and normalised what many felt was a grandiose corporate culture that had problems fitting with the Indian psyche. No wonder the big guys of the exceptionally high-profile PepsiCo remember him as a remarkably low-profile Chairman.

Sinha, nephew of firebrand opposition leader Jayprakash Narayan, believed in taking the bull by the horns. He loved hard work and leadership by example. Both stayed with him throughout his working life.

As a Director with Hindustan Unilever, he was posted in Delhi for nearly a decade and knew the intricacies of babucracy, as well as the influencers. Sinha took over from former PepsiCo President Ramesh Vangal and pushed the head office to give him a purse of $1 billion. He called it his war chest and started expanding aggressively. By the time he called it a day, PepsiCo had 44 plants in India, including ones owned by franchisees.

It was Sinha who offered interest-free loans to bottlers to expand. He even bought over some of PepsiCo’s partners and big bottlers. When Sinha was trying to acquire local drinks maker Duke’s to get its plant outside Mumbai, Sinha worked overtime and held around 27 meetings with the owners, the Pandole family. The deal was eventually sealed for Rs 46 crore in 1994.

Some of his moves drew flak. One was when he hawked a tomato processing unit in Punjab to Hindustan Lever. Many felt PepsiCo’s real strength was soft drinks, not developing agriculture in India. Sinha took criticism on the chin, like he did when he pushed PepsiCo India to export seaweed and rice. He told his critics that he had introduced contract farming in India, which had improved tomato and potato yields.

Then there was the big fight with Coca-Cola. The Atlanta-based bosses of Coca-Cola launched the drink in Agra in 1993, and posed for photographs with the majestic Taj Mahal in the background. PepsiCo executives lined soda fountains all the way from Delhi to the launch site. In another instance, Sinha once pushed his company to destroy 250 ml bottles worth Rs 60 crore when an insider informed him that Coca-Cola would sell 300 ml bottles at the same price.

Sinha felt the heat when Coca-Cola picked up all the brands from Ramesh Chauhan and gained instant market share. He said once: “I fight two brands, Coca-Cola and Thums Up. Coca-Cola only fights Pepsi.”

One of the high points in Sinha’s career was when he spent around Rs 10 crore on a guerrilla marketing campaign that said Nothing Official About It. The campaign was meant to neutralise Coca-Cola’s Rs 10 crore sponsorship of the 1997 Cricket World Cup. The campaign captured the imagination of the people and also got a lot of press, and helped PepsiCo gradually narrow the market share gap with Coca-Cola.

This was followed by Yeh Dil Maange More, a campaign that stole the thunder from Coca-Cola. When a Major of the Indian Army used the line after a victory on one of the peaks at Kargil, Sinha was over the moon.

Peter Thompson, former President, PepsiCo, wrote a lovely memo when Sinha called it a day after nine and a half years. “The mark of a strong leader is to chart a winning course, build a great organisation, and deliver outstanding results. Suman has accomplished all of that, and more.”

Thompson was possibly referring to the time when Sinha took charge. MPs, probably egged on by domestic businessmen, would ask dozens of questions in Parliament about PepsiCo, agitations filled the streets in big cities and in the hinterland, where farmers felt the big bad wolf would eat them up. The powerful Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM) called PepsiCo a traitor that should be chased away like Coca-Cola and IBM.

Sinha led PepsiCo India for nine-and-a-half years.

Sinha remained unfazed. As a nephew of Jaiprakash Narayan, Sinha understood India’s political underbelly. He made India PepsiCo’s second-largest market outside the US.

Seasoned communicator Deepak Jolly remembers some of Sinha’s bold decisions.

In 1990, during Jolly’s stint at Unilever, ULFA threatened to kill the key executives at the Doom Dooma tea estate in Assam if the ransom wasn’t paid. An estate manager of Tata Tea had already been gunned down over an unpaid ransom. Sinha led the rescue operation of 139 people as HLL refused to pay the ransom.

“He was able to leverage his strong relations with the government, the air force and the Assam Chief Secretary, and managed a most difficult rescue operation with a plane landing on the Doom Dooma airstrip which hadn’t been used in years. Before the deadline for the ransom expired, 139 staff members and their families were flown out of danger to Calcutta,” said Jolly.

When injured soldiers returned from the Kargil War, FICCI decided to raise money to help them start alternative careers. Sinha organised a large event with actors, singers, and other Bollywood artistes. “The entire Pepsi marketing team worked with him. There was no Pepsi branding. The PM, the President, and the Chiefs of the Army, Air Force, and the Navy, were among the 25,000 people that attended the event. It was organised in five days flat.”