New York: PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi is the sole Indian-origin executive in Fortune's list of 50 most powerful women in business, which has been topped by General Motors CEO Mary Barra. India-born Nooyi is ranked 2nd on the list, moving up a notch from her third position last year.
"Nooyi marks her ninth year atop the USD 66.6 billion snack-and-drink behemoth in a stronger position than she's been in for a long time," Fortune said about the 59-year-old top executive.
It cited her beating back a challenge from activist investor Nelson Peltz, landing a big marketing deal with the NBA, and managed to post 4 per cent organic revenue growth in 2014.
Barra tops the Fortune list of 50 Most Powerful Women in Business and in her second year as head of the nation’s largest auto-maker, Barra "has led the USD 156-billion-in- sales company out from under the shadow of its 2014 ignition-switch recall."
She was also one of the few female CEO participants in the
viral "#ilooklikeanengineer" Twitter campaign, which promoted women in tech.
"One trillion dollars in stock market value. That's what just the 27 CEOs on The Fortune Most Powerful Women list control," Fortune said.
The list also includes IBM CEO Ginni Rometty on the third rank, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (8), Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (18), Mylan CEO Heather Bresch (22), Procter & Gamble Group President, North America Carolyn Tastad (36) and singer Taylor Swift (51).
On Sandberg, Fortune said her vision of Facebook as a mobile advertising giant is finally becoming a reality.
Facebook's profits nearly doubled in 2014, to USD 2.9 billion, and mobile ad revenue now comprises 76 per cent of its total ad sales, up from 62 per cent in the second quarter of 2014.
"The next chapter in Sandberg's monetization strategy involves attracting more advertisers to viral photo-sharing app Instagram, which now counts 300 million users," it said.