Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi joins Amazon board

Seattle-based ecommerce major Amazon appointed former PepsiCo Inc Chief Executive Officer Indra Nooyi to its board of directors as part of the company’s policy to be more diverse and inclusive.

Indra Nooyi is the second woman after Starbucks Corp's Chief Operating Officer Rosalind Brewer to join Amazon board this month. Last year, the company adopted a new policy to boost diversity in its workforce.

Amazon came under heavy pressure from shareholders, employees and the Congressional Black Caucus to adopt a shareholder proposal to increase diversity on its board of directors. As a result, the company announced in May last year that it would adopt a ‘Rooney Rule’ to increase the diversity of its board. The rule encourages the practice of inducting members from minority communities and qualified women into company boards.

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Earlier this month, Amazon announced that it had named Rosalind Brewer, an African-American, to the board. Brewer is the second black woman to serve on Amazon board. Myrtle Potter, the former president and COO of Genentech, was the first. She served from 2004 to 2009. With Nooyi's appointment, Amazon's 11-member board has five women, including Nooyi, Brewer, Jamie Gorelick, Judith McGrath and Patricia Stonesifer.

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Nooyi will be part of the audit committee of Amazon's board. She stepped down as CEO of a multinational food, snack and beverage company PepsiCo in October 2018 after 24 years of service. As CEO, she was widely credited with having introduced healthier products into the company's products portfolio.

In India, Amazon and other ecommerce companies with foreign ownership are currently figuring out a new market landscape after the government announced new regulations that barred them from owning inventory and restricting exclusive marketing arrangements.

Last Saturday, the government released the draft ecommerce policy, proposing to set up a legal and technological framework for issues as varied as cross-border data flow, anti-counterfeiting measures, digital economy, taxation and other regulatory issues. The 42-page draft also laid down conditions for companies on collection and processing of sensitive data locally, and storing it abroad.