(Above): Indra Nooyi (Pic: courtesy TiE Silicon Valley)

By Viji Sundaram

Even though the COVID pandemic has been an “incredible disruptor” worldwide, claiming lives, weakening economies and forcing educational institutions to rethink the way they teach students, it has at the same time created way more opportunities in technology, asserted Indra Nooyi, the former head of PepsiCo.

Speaking earlier today at TiEcon’s annual event, done virtually this year because of the pandemic, Nooyi said that “a lot of industries have to remake themselves” to accommodate the growing number of consumers who have to go online for even their basic needs.

People are now so Amazon-dependent, observed Nooyi, who sits on the company’s board of directors. Clinics with little or no tele-health capacity are now ramping up their capabilities in that area so patients can make virtual visits with their health care providers.

“Everything is now at your finger tips,” Nooyi said, noting that ironically, people are going to look back at these trying times and view the pandemic as “technology’s friend.” One of the drawbacks of this, as far as she is concerned, is that personal data is now given out to everybody.

The other worrisome fallout from the pandemic, she said, is that it has forced people to socially distance themselves and shelter in place. “Social interaction is going down and cocooning is going up,” neither of which is good for people’s psyche, she said.

“We need to use technology to solve societal problems” not exacerbate them, she said.

Nooyi was a keynote speaker on the opening day of TiEcon 2020.  As in previous years, the annual global event focused on fostering entrepreneurship.

The pandemic did not put a damper on putting together an “amazing speaker line up,” B.J. Arun, president of the Silicon Valley chapter of the organization noted. Aside from Nooyi, among them were C.J. Desai, chief product officer at ServiceNow, Purnima Kochikar, director of business development, games and application at Google Play and Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. Organizers estimated that more than 7,000 people would participate.

Moderating Nooyi’s presentation was Seema Mody, global markets reporter of CNBC. Mody picked Nooyi’s brains on a wide range of issues, encouraging the Chennai-born 64-year-old woman to share how she moved to the top at Pepsi. While there, Nooyi soon became the second highest paid woman CEO globally. What advice would she give women, Mody asked, to be successful in the corporate world.

Women in the US tech industry, Nooyi said, get only 2.3 percent of the total venture capital funding of around $100 billion annually, according to 2019 figures. She lashed out at this discrepancy.

“Every tech entrepreneur should be ashamed” for not leveling the playing field for women entrepreneurs, Nooyi said, noting that a large number of women graduate with computer science degrees from US schools each year and enter the work force.

“There is too much of bro-culture in Silicon Valley,” she said, not concealing her unhappiness over it. “We should start a program for women and minorities and deploy them in companies.” She said she would like to see tech executives mentor them so they could hold top leadership roles.

Asked how she views the role of technology 15 to 20 years from now, Nooyi acknowledged that it was hard to project the curve. But there was no doubt that it would become an even greater part of every one’s life, she said. That of course meant saying goodbye to anonymity and privacy, something that the tech world should keep front and center even as it marches forward.

“Otherwise, we’ll have a society we won’t recognize,” she warned.