Pepsi former chief PM Sinha, who Indianised cola, passes away

Priya Mohan Sinha, or Suman Sinha as he was better known, former chief executive of PepsiCo India who first ‘Indianised’ colas in India, passed away on Wednesday in Gurgaon. He was in his early eighties. The low-profile Sinha headed PepsiCo’s India business for a decade, between 1993-2003.

Under Sinha, who had moved from Hindustan Unilever, PepsiCo acquired Duke & Sons’ beverage business. However, Sinha lost out to rival Coca-Cola in an intense bidding battle to acquire Ramesh Chauhan’s soft drink brands Thums Up and Limca.

The affable and soft-spoken Sinha had taken over from PepsiCo India's first chief executive officer Ramesh Vangal.

Associates and former industry colleagues recall Sinha as someone who “aggressively” bought out bottlers in various territories at a time when PepsiCo was going all out to win market share and expand its bottling operations across Indian cities.

“He steered the cola maker’s narrative from that of a ‘foreign company doing business in India’ to one that localised its positioning with astute communication and marketing, amid the economic liberalisation wave that was sweeping the country then,” said a former colleague and close friend of Sinha. Under his leadership came some of the first mega ad campaigns of PepsiCo, including the iconic “Yeh Dil Maange More.’

Sinha made his mark in the sales function at HUL in the early part of his career, and was at the forefront of the 'cola wars' of the 1990s.

A former colleague of Sinha’s recollects that during the Kargil stand-off with Pakistani troops, Captain Vikram Batra reported recapturing the Kargil peaks with the Pepsi tagline “yeh dil maange more”, something Sinha carried fond memories of.

"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," is how an internal PepsiCo memo chose to announce Sinha stepping down from his role at the cola maker back in 2003.

Sinha passed on the baton to Rajeev Bakshi.

In 2013, footwear maker Bata roped in Sinha as its non-executive chairman, as it embarked on transforming itself from a manufacturing firm to a marketing one.