Patanjali goes online, targets over Rs1,000 cr revenue this year

Yoga guru Ramdev-led Patanjali Ayurved announced the launch of online sales of its consumer items on Tuesday, partnering major players in the space, including Amazon and Flipkart, and targeting over Rs1,000 crore in revenue this year.

The Haridwar-based company said it has partnered eight players, which also include Grofers, Shopclues, BigBasket, 1mg, Paytm Mall and Netmeds, through which its entire range of products would be available online.

The move was on expected lines, as Patanjali had announced its ecommerce intentions earlier this month. "Patanjali Ayurveda has started working on a massive online push. The announcement of agreement with world's largest ecommerce companies will happen soon. A new chapter of online shopping of Patanjali products from many portals will begin soon," company spokesperson S K Tijarawala tweeted on 7 January. (See: Patanjali ties up with Amazon, Flipkart, others for big online push).

Tijarawala had said partnerships with e-retailers will be in addition to Patanjali's own web portal patanjaliayurved.net. ''The retailers and aggregators would share the dais … they are coming and make announcement together that they would be working with brand Patanjali,'' he said.

"Online mechanism aims to provide convenient and efficient options along with extension of traditional retail market," Baba Ramdev said on Tuesday.

The company had started trial of online sales of its Swadeshi range of products, through its platform www.patanjaliayurved.net on trial basis and got encouraging results, Ramdev said.

"This was reflected in online sales which crossed Rs10 crore during December itself, the highest online sales by any FMCG brand in a month," he added.

Besides, Patanjali is also expanding its retail network in brick and mortar format and has plans to introduce more products in the value based small offering targeting rural customers.

"We have around 5,000 exclusive stores and would add more into that. We are going to launch a new loyalty card on January 26, named 'Swadesh Samridhi'," said Ramdev.

Patanjali plans to connect around five crore people through its loyalty programme, which would also offer insured sum to the holders in case of death and disability, he said.

Ramdev further said, "Our products are sold at around 15 to 20 lakh kirana stores and 75 per cent are still left to be covered. We would connect with them and this year we are targeting to cover 50 lakh kirana shops. Now we are looking rural coverage also."

In view of its expansion plans, Patanjali is also increasing its manpower.

"We are going to recruit a new team of around 20,000 people, from the level of sales manager to zonal manager and regional manager," he said, adding the company would also ramp up production capacity accordingly.

"We have created the annual production capacity worth Rs 50,000 crore, the highest in FMCG sector so far at Haridwar and Tejpur, Assam. Besides work is in progress at full speed at Noida, Nagpur and Indore as well," said Ramdev.

Asked about exports, Ramdev said that from the next fiscal export would start once its export oriented unit at Miha in Nagpur becomes operational.

"This will facilitate export of Patanjali products to the UAE, the US, Canada, Europe, South America, African countries besides others."

Recently, Patanjali had forayed into kids and adult diapers and affordable sanitary napkins segments. Last month, it had also announced to venturing into solar equipment manufacturing.

In 2016-17, it had crossed a turnover of Rs10,500 crore and aims a two-fold growth this fiscal.