Russian authorities have approved PepsiCo’s $3.8 billion acquisition of Wimm-Bill-Dann. PepsiCo CEO, Indra Nooyi, says Russia is a perfect platform for further global expansion.
IN:“Using Wimm-Bill-Dann, I think, we can expand into the CIS, Central and Eastern Europe, because those markets can be serviced out of Wimm-Bill-Dann in Russia. We have to decide how to take the Wimm-Bill-Dann technology, develop a whole range of products we can sell in other parts of the world. So we are going to leverage the Wimm-Bill-Dann value added dairy expertise, our partnership with Almarai, which is a Saudi Arabian dairy company, and figure out how to bring the expertise of both companies together to build out a dairy platform for the company.”RT:How much can you grow Wimm-Bill-Dann as a company?IN:“Our nutrition business, which is about $10 billion today, and with Wimm-Bill-Dann becomes $12 billion plus, can grow to about $30 billion by 2020. And Russia becomes very interesting, because Russia has got land and Russia has got water, and Russia can be a great source of fruit for us, so one of our goals is to develop Russian agriculture to be the hub for certain fruits – stone fruits in particular – for the rest of the world.”RT:What is the difference between doing business in Russia and in other emerging markets? IN:“Russia is, perhaps, more developed than India, in terms of frameworks exist, systems exist.So it does in India too, but, in India when you want to buy land, you have to really go through a long process to get it, because its a rule of law.You cant go to a small farmer and say you want the land. You’ve got to go through a process.”