A research report on Patanjali

Abstract

Patanjali, founded in 2007 by Baba Ramdev and his aide Swami Acharya Balakrishan has grown into a 5000 crore company in 2015. It has disrupted the entire FMCG market with its unconventional growth story. The credit goes to Baba Ramdev who has very meticulously decided the timeline for each action and delivered unprecedented success. Patanjali’s vision is to provide herbal/ayurvedic/natural solutions to all the problems and in this pursuit it is also elevating the livelihoods of local farmers. It has leveraged the emotional route by bringing in the ‘Swadeshi’ angle to market its products. The drivers for Patanjali purchase are lower price points which induces sampling and when they find no noticeable difference with the pricey brands, they tend to stick to Patanjali. The key differentiators for Patanjali are its herbal or ayurvedic offerings and the free consultation it provides to the customers at Arogya Kendras/ Chikitsalayas through its certified Ayurvedic doctors. Besides it has also increased its distribution channels through franchise stores, retail chains and kirana stores. However the supply is not proportional to demand and a lot of customers are not able to find the desired products. To solve this, they have invested in food parks and have outsourced manufacturing to other SMEs while conducting stringent checks to ensure consistent quality. The strategy followed by Patanjali is unconventional in that they have not made any significant investment in marketing and promotion and have relied on word of mouth publicity. Baba Ramdev has done minimal promotion by endorsing the brand in his yoga sessions televised on national channels. The FMCG giants cannot rely on such a strategy because they cannot sell the products at such low prices or provide free doctor consultations and other activities on a continuous basis. Thus it is not feasible for other companies to follow this model. The FMCG industry has a lot of big players with dominant market leaders in each category. Patanjali is in direct rivalry with most of them and with time has been able to take away market share from the best-selling brands. In retaliation, the market leaders are bringing out newer herbal products at lower price points or putting into action other strategies. However Patanjali has the advantage of being the forerunner and have gained sufficient traction that it will be difficult to displace them. The entrance of Patanjali has not just marked its increased share of the pie but it has also managed to increase the size of the pie itself.