Patanjali to tap fair price shops in Madhya Pradesh to drive sales

Patanjali, the food and medicines ventutre started by yoga guru Ramdev and his aide Acharya Balkrishna, plans to tap fair price shops to promote its products in Madhya Pradesh.

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday suggested the idea of selling Patanjali products along with government-subsidised food grains, in part intended to make the 16,500-odd fair price shops in the state profitable.

''We want to convert fair price shops into multi-utility shops; they will benefit from associating with Patanjali products,'' The Indian Express quoted minister of state for cooperatives (independent charge) Vishwas Sarang as saying. There are more than 16,500 fair price shops in the state's 51 districts. In addition, there are thousands of cooperative societies that, too, can stock Patanjali products,'' said the minister.

''Yoga Acharya's Patanjali took the market by storm and is eating away market share of other multinational FMCG's. Patanjali registered a turnover of Rs 5000 crore and expects to hit Rs10,000 crore in 2017'', says Hurun India Rich List report.

Patanjali also brought yoga guru Ramdev's aide Acharya Balkrishna, who owns 80 per cent of the business, into the Hurun India Rich List with a wealth of Rs25,600 crore (around $3.8 billion).

Patanjali Ayurved Ltd, a company registered as a private company in Industrial Area, Haridwar, Uttarakhand in  January 2006, was subsequently converted into public limited company on 25 June 2007.

At present, the board of directors of the company has Acharya Balkrishna as its managing director along with Swami Muktanandji and Ajay Kumar Arya, as directors.

According to the memorandum and articles of association of the company, Patanjali plans  to manufacture, process, refine, formulate, import, export and deal in all kinds of Ayurvedic and herbal products, including life savings drugs, apart from so other related objects.

The concept for forming this company was to ''link the rising destiny of millions of rural masses on the one hand and many more suffering and leading unhealthy urban life style on the other''.

Patanjali takes a holistic approach to improve the quality of life of all beings, world over. ''Getting rid the food we consume of the pollutants in the form of poisonous pesticides and chemical fertilizers that our farmers use, is a goal that we strive to achieve by providing our people the eatables that are cultivated in organic and natural manures and pest repellents.''

Patanjali has expanded into 12 units including units for packaging material and containers, a flour mill, candy plant, herbal cosmetic and detergent plants, digestives unit, juice plant etc.

Patanjali brand with national and international reach, has more than 85,000 retail outlets and employs more than 6,000 labourers in its processing activities and has more than 300 technically qualified employees.

Patanjali already provides indirect employment to more than 2 lakh people.