Neville Isdell on his book Inside Coca-Cola

Inside Coca-Cola
By Neville Isdell with David Beasley
St. Martin's Press
Pages: 254
Price: Rs 499

In early 2004, Coca-Cola wanted Jack Welch as its Chairman and CEO. Having lost its way, and market share, since the death of Roberto Goizueta in 1997, the company wanted Welch, who had retired as the Chairman of General Electric and got married, to turn it around. But Welch, still on his honeymoon, grew cold feet. Coca-Cola then hired another retiree, one of its own, Neville Isdell, who had never aspired to the top job and never thought it possible. In the next five years, Isdell went on to put Coca-Cola back on track. In his second retirement now, Isdell, who was born in Ireland, grew up in Zambia and drank Pepsi in college in Cape Town because Coke was not available, has written the story of Coca-Cola, the first by a CEO of the company. He spoke to Suveen K. Sinha on the phone from Barbados, where, at 68, he is enjoying uninterrupted golf in the Caribbean sunshine. Edited excerpts:

To paraphrase a hackneyed saying, you went where Welch feared to tread.
(Chuckles) That's up to him to say. He faced the same decision that I did: is it something I want to do the rest of my life? I had not headed the Coca-Cola company, or a company as big as that. Jack had.

You, as Group President, approved the acquisition of the Parle brands from Ramesh Chauhan. If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
Not a lot. Nothing major that I would have changed. I wish I had got involved with the right management earlier. India was one of the countries I visited in my first 100 days as Chairman and CEO. Any turnaround takes a 10-year period. I talked to the board about that and said I was going to do it in five. Given my age, I wanted to have some retirement. The other thing I said to them was that I would not take any short-term decisions just to look good. Looking at the long term, I saw India.

So did you or did you not buy the Parle brands, including Thums Up, just to kill them?
We felt that we could not have both Gold Spot and Fanta, and Citra and Sprite. We dropped those brands. But Limca was a very strong brand. We kept the Limca book coming out as well. I really believed in Thums Up, and grew Maaza.

How did you become the first Coca-Cola CEO to write its story? How much is the book blessed by the company?
I like telling stories; the Irish people do. I had a few years ago drafted a book about growing up in Africa, and being involved in student politics against the apartheid. I did not really complete it and that book is being written by a lot of people. Eventually, a year after I stepped down, I said to myself you have to make a decision now or it will never be done. I told the Coke management I was going to write the book. It is not a book authorised officially by Coca-Cola, nor edited by Coca-Cola. I agreed to let them see it so there would be no legal issues. They allowed me to look at the archives. They were helpful.