- Indra Nooyi is married into a Gurupur household
By Richie Lasrado
Mangalore, Aug 17: When Daijiworld broke the news on August 14 about the new eve Nooyi at the helm of PepsiCo in the US, the name was already sounding familiar. Enquiries on Tuesday with different sources gave conflicting versions.
The name Nooyi may perhaps have puzzled the westerners. Whenever Indra Nooyi is featured in the media, a mention is made that the name is pronounced "New-ee".
A reader from Chennai, currently based in the city, confirmed on Tuesday that 'Nooyi' was not a Tamil family name. An old acquaintance, who knew of the family members many years ago, mentioned Kundapur as the native place. Confusion was added by Pepsi's Indian officials, upon our enquiry, giving credit to Mysore as the place of the family's origin, possibly because some old-timer had it in mind that Nooyi was located in erstwhile Mysore state.
The ancestral Nooyi house in Gurupur on the ouskirts of the city
Now it is official. On Wednesday, we tracked down the family roots to Nooyi in Gurupur. Indra met Raj Kishan Nooyi, son of Nooyi Sooryanarayana Rao, and an engineer by profession in the US and they got married the soon after. Sooryanarayana Rao's brother Srinivasa Rao is a city advocate.
Earlier News on Daijiworld