Manu
Balachandran & Madhura Karnik, Quartz India
New
Delhi, 18 November 2015
First
he became the face of yoga in India. Now, he is taking on major
global consumer goods companies with products ranging from herbal
tea and fruit juices to toiletries.
Baba Ramdevborn Ramkrishna Yadavseems poised to give
some of Indias biggest consumer goods makers a run for their
money with his ayurvedic, made in India products. Patanjali Ayurved
Ltd, a company that Ramdev founded in 2006 along with his confidante,
Acharya Bal Krishna, has emerged amongst Indias fastest
growing fast moving consumer goods (FMCG).
And Ramdev is piggybacking on prime minister Narendra Modis
Make in India campaign to promote his goods. All the products
that Patanjali manufactures have a Made in Bharat
label.
This week, Patanjali launched a noodle brand to compete with
Nestles Maggi, which is now back in Indian markets after
a brief ban. While Indias food regulator, FSSAI, maintains
that Patanjalis noodles dont have necessary approvals,
the company is all set to start sales in the coming weeks. Ramdevs
company is also planning to take on global sportswear brands like
Nike and Adidas by introducing a yoga-wear collection.
In January, Aditya Pittie, chairman of the Pittie Group, which
is a distributor for Patanjalis products, told the Times
of India newspaper that the company was expected to cross the
Rs2,000 crore mark in the 2015 fiscal. If these estimates are
true, the eight-year-old firm has already overtaken brands like
Emamian old name in Indias FMCG sector.
Quartz was not able to independently verify these figures as
Indias Registrar of Companies does not have information
for the 2015 financial, yet. Patanjali Ayurved did not respond
to an emailed questionnaire from Quartz.
Rocketing revenues
Patanjalis phenomenal growth trajectory is making big retail
chains in the country sit up.
Although the company has a massive presence across India trough
franchiseesits products are available in over 177,000 retail
storesit is now tying up with retail behemoths to reach
a wider audience.
In October, Ramdev entered into a partnership with the Kishore
Biyani-owned Future Group for promotion and distribution of its
products. Future Group is one of Indias largest retail groups
with presence in more than 95 cities.
Our effort is to promote swadeshi and give a tough fight
to MNCs, Ramdev told reporters after announcing the alliance
with Future Group. The 50-year-old yoga teacher added that Patanjali
will also launch new products like pasta, oats, muesli and juices
to cater to Indias growing middle class that is developing
a taste for western flavours.
For the current fiscal, the firm is looking to target revenue
of Rs5,000 crore.
Headquartered in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, Patanjali was found in
2006 with a paid-up capital of Rs41 crore.
At its own claimed revenues of Rs5,000 crore in this financial
year, it will be among the top five FMCG companies in the country.
With its recent announcement to enter more product categoriesyoga
apparel, baby and childrens nutritional foods etc.it
is poised to enter the top three in the next two to three years
if its current spectacular growth rate continues, Arvind
Singhal, managing director of Technopak, a management consultancy,
told Quartz in an email. With that size, it will certainly
be a formidable competitor to several established brands and companies
such as HUL, Nestle, ITC Foods, and GSK to name a few, he
added.
A report from international brokerage, CLSA, in August said that
Patanjalis core strength is its mass appeal.
The plans are even more interesting as the company is now
looking at traditional ways to expand and targets
to more than double the top line in coming years, the report
said. While competition must be keeping its fingers crossed,
all we can say isWish you were listed.
Brand Ramdev
The company usually refrains from spending big money on advertising
and marketing, which is an important driver for brand creation.
Typically, an FMCG firm in India spends about 10-15% of its revenues
on advertising while Patanjali had negligible spending and relies
mainly only on endorsement by Baba Ramdev and his disciples and
instructors, according to CLSA.
Much of the promotions also happen during yoga sessions conducted
by Ramdev. The yoga guru also depends heavily on followers who
are popular celebrities such as wrestling champion, Sushil Kumar,
to endorse products during these yoga programs.
And according to CLSA, Patanjali has the potential to reach out
to more than 200 million who are directly or indirectly linked
to his yoga programme.
This year, as the company looks to take on some of Indias
biggest FMCG companies, Patanjali has also roped in advertisingagencies,
McCann and Mudra to run a brand new campaign. The company has
already roped in one of the countrys biggest film star,
Hema Malini, to endorse a maida flour free biscuit.
Challenges persist
Born in 1965 to a poor family of farmers, Ramdev, along with
his friend Acharya Bal Krishna, started taking yoga lessons and
travelling around on bicycles to clients homes to perform
religious ceremonies in the late 1990s.
Today, Ramdevs empire in Haridwar alone spans a hospital,
an ayurveda medical school and research institution, a food park
and a cosmetics manufacturing unit. He also reportedly purchased
an island in Scotland worth £2 million to set up a wellness
centre.
However, there could be some bumps in Ramdevs smooth ride
in the FMCG sectorespecially with his new products such
as noodles.
In the growing market for ready-to-cook packaged food,
a new entrant would struggle to create visibility and initial
demand, Devangshu Dutta, CEO of Third Eyesight, a retail
consultancy, told Quartz in an email.
The other aspect to keep in mind is that while a lot
of food and nutraceutical products resonate easily with the Patanjali
brand, instant noodles seems completely counter-intuitive under
this brands umbrella. How much consumers will support this
new launch remains to be seen, he explained. [See "From
yogasan to ayurved to noodles" for a fuller analysis.]
Meanwhile, before launching the noodles, Ramdev who never tasted
them, ate noodles for several days, Bal Krishna told
the Business Standard newspaper. Patanjali can only hope that
its customers take to their product with the same gusto.
(Published in Quartz
India.)
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