Nooyi: Sourced Competitor Plant Satellite Photos via FOIA Request
Indra Nooyi · Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi: Lessons from the Top · Jun 24, 2025 · at 20:33
Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi recounts a strategic consulting assignment where she used government FOIA filings to gather intelligence on a competitor's new manufacturing facility.
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“If you did an FOI, a Freedom of Information request to the Intelligence Department, and ask them to give you satellite photographs of the plant from different altitudes, they can give you a pretty good picture. And I did that, and in a few days, I got the pictures at, like, 5000 feet and 3000 feet, and I now know from the top what the plant looked like, the size of the plant, you know, what kind of bays, You know, what kinds of products they might be considering manufacturing there.”
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