Nooyi said that her employees are worried about their safety after Trump’s victory.
Supporters of president-elect Donald Trump attacked PepsiCo’s Indian American CEO Indra Nooyi on social media and have called to boycott of PepsiCo after they misinterpreted her statement.
Speaking at the New York Times Dealbook conference a day after the elections results were announced, Nooyi said she was approached by a few employees in Pepsi who were worried about their safety in the US after Trump’s victory.
Nooyi, who is a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter, was asked during the interview about how she felt on the morning of November 9. “Do you have a box of tissues here?” Nooyi joked as a reply.
“I had to answer a lot of questions from my daughters, from our employees. They were all in mourning. Our employees were all crying. The question that they are asking, especially those who are not white ‘Are we safe’, women are asking ‘Are we safe’, LGBT people are asking ‘Are we safe,” she added.
The PepsiCo CEO also congratulated Donald Trump and reiterated that it was important for America to stand united.
“I think that the first thing that we all have to do is to assure everybody in the United States that they are safe. Nothing has changed because of this election. What we heard was election talk. And we will all come together and unify the country. So the process of democracy happened. We just have to let life go on,” Nooyi said.
However, a few Trump supporters misquoted Indra Nooyi as saying, “We don’t want your business” and took their rage to Twitter, calling for a boycott of all PepsiCo products. The smear campaign against PepsiCo and its CEO has resulted in the fall of the company’s stock evaluation.
Many pro-Trump accounts on social media started posting abusive comments and asked PepsiCo to sack Nooyi with hashtag #BoycottPepsi. Some users didn’t hesitate to hurl racist comments on Nooyi, who was born in India.
“Mrs. Nooyi misspoke. She was referring to the reaction of a group of employees she spoke to who were apprehensive about the outcome of the election. She never intended to imply that all employees feel the same way. We are incredibly proud of the diverse views and backgrounds across our workforce, and we are united in our desire for a brighter future,” a PepsiCo spokesman told The Washington Post in an emailed statement.