A loading vehicle with a poster showing the picture of Pepsi, which is one of Pepsico's many global brands.
Credit: Reuters File Photo
Global markets are caught up in a sort of new urgency to fetch the most accurate content for consumers using artificial intelligence, which has promptly occupied space in several sectors. The food sector is one such area where beverages and snack maker PepsiCo is experimenting with generative AI or GenAI.
GenAI is an advanced tool which offers an ocean of options for content creators with a simple and handy user interface. In a recent interaction with the Economic Times, Athina Kanioura, the chief strategy and transformation officer of PepsiCo, said that the company is benefitting big time using AI in its marketing and customer feedback analysis.
With a net worth of over $200 billion as on March 2024, PepsiCo caters to consumers globally with its diverse brands, including Pepsi cold drinks, Tropicana juices, and Lays potato chips. With a business this massive, the company has been using GenAI to collect feedback from its customers, based on which it has been incorporating changes in its product displays, messages, and interestingly— the flavour as well.
Citing an example of Cheetos where such a process of using GenAI was put to use, Kanioura told ET that such AI-driven feedback collection helped Cheetos improvise on "the shape and flavour" of the edible product. She then goes on to say that such a mechanism has also helped Pepsico in terms of accelerating sales. "We saw a 15 per cent increase in market penetration with GenAI," Kanioura said referring to the profitability registered by the company in marketing and sales.
Headquartered in New York, PepsiCo is now planning to establish a new capability centre in India, in 2024, while Kanioura told ET that the beverage giant is also keen on hiring more employees in India. Currently, the company has around 4,000 employees in its two capability centres in the country at Hyderabad and Gurugram.
The chief strategy officer asserted to the publication, “We are adding a third capability centre in India this year soon, and elevating a lot of our India leadership roles as well as global leadership, positioning a lot of talent out of India...India’s talent is being leveraged across the globe."
PepsiCo's capability centre in Hyderabad employees 3,000 staffers and the facility is AI-focused, while it is also working on process transformation and next generation technologies that are said to have AI involvement. Kanioura then said that the facility in Gurugram functions on software engineering, without elaborating any further in this regard.
For the industry as a whole, Kanioura told the publication that she expects GenAI to generate a 10-15 per cent revenue increase depending on a company's existing AI adoption. According to Kanioura, GenAI-based approach is also helping PepsiCo deliver stronger product campaigns, in less time, as compared to the routine campaigns that are usually designed after days of brainstorming and data gathering.