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Tag: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

  • Spirituality is on the path of marketing with Baba Ramdev, Art of Living and others foraying into the consumer space

    Trusts of Baba Ramdev, Art of Living etc emerge as large consumer product makers?

    By Writankar Mukherjee & Sarah Jacob

     

    Spiritual gurus and ashrams are widening their reach among the populace not just through their teachings but through products as well.

     

    If Osho slippers are a craze among fashionable youngsters, Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali line of personal care and packaged food products and Art of Living’s body lotions and ayurvedic energizers too are finding takers beyond their followers.

     

    “These products have the potential to challenge some of the top FMCG brands in the market,” Sanjiv Goenka, chairman of hypermarket chain Spencer’s Retail, says.

     

    Industry observers say spiritual trusts such as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living, Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved, Aurobindo Ashram, Pujya Bapuji’s Sant Shri Asharamji Ashram, Coimbatore-based Isha Foundation and the organisation that runs Swaminarayan Akshardham are all on the cusp of emerging large consumer product makers.

     

    Some of them plan to widen distribution of their products-so far largely sold at their ashrams-through kirana stores, supermarkets and online retailing. Some are entering into back-end integration for commodity sourcing and are building distinct brands.

     

    Spencer’s plans to sell such products at its outlets-there are more than 200 of them-and is open to offer larger shelf space than even some mainstream brands.

     

    “These organisations have huge brand pull and Ayurveda products always do well. It is a potent pull factor,” says Mr Goenka.

     

    Advertising veteran R Balki thinks it would take a while before these products compete with the established brands, but says they can create a niche for themselves. “These products have a great base or personality-they tend to connote health, nature and purity,” says Mr Balki, chairman of advertising agency Lowe Lintas & Partners.

     

    PROFITS FOR CHARITY

    Baba Ramdev started retailing his Patanjali line of FMCG products via through kiranas and modern retail in April. Acharya Balkrishnan, promoter of Patanjali Ayurved Products and a close aide of Ramdev, said this would allow the firm more than quadruple its sales to 2,000 crore this fiscal from 455 crore in 2011-12. If achieved, this would make Patanjali larger than Fair & Handsome and Boroplus-maker Emami and at nipping distance of Colgate-Palmolive. Patanjali Ayurved says it achieved a net profit of 100 crore last fiscal.

     

    Being not-for-profit organizations, spiritual trusts plough back all their profits to sustain their organisations and charitable work.  If Patanjali has decided that none of the board members will earn from the company’s profits, others too say profits from sales will be used to support their activities.

     

    “Through the sale of the products, Art of Living funds its various service initiatives like the 185 free schools which it runs in the Naxal and the tribal belts of India,” says Umesh Pradhan, trustee at Sri Sri Ayurveda Trust, the FMCG arm of Art of Living. The trust makes creams, shampoos, body care lotion, scrubs, cleansing milk, soaps, ayurvedic energisers and juices.

     

    Isha Foundation, which has recently ventured into the FMCG space, says the foray is to support its various activities. Pondicherry-based Aurobindo Ashram, which forayed into FMCG products as vocational development for its inmates, now retails incense sticks, soaps, candles, perfumes and furniture through Khadi Bhandar and even in overseas.

     

    HOME, AWAY & ONLINE

    Consumer goods companies take years to build a distribution channel and consumer base while devoting large investments into branding. Big ashrams already have a loyal consumer base among their devotees running into millions.

     

    “Our devotees are our primary consumers,” says Mr Pradhan of Art of Living, which claims it has more than 300 million followers across the world. It sells its products through ‘Divine Shops’ set up at locations where it organises its programmes, as well as through the world’s largest online retailer Amazon.

     

    Ahmedabad’s Sant Shri Asharamji Ashram sells its products through outlets at ashrams, mobile vans and at devotees’ homes.

     

    Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), the socio-spiritual Hindu organisation that runs Swaminarayan temples and Akshardham in New Delhi and Gandhinagar, retails at 800 temples across India, US and UK. Its chyawanprash, honey, oil, tea, shampoo and dental care products, sold under BAPS Amrut brand, are also retailed online.

     

    Baba Ramdev, meanwhile, has big-ticket plans for rural India. His Patanjali Ayurved plans to launch swadeshi seva kendras with self-help groups by August.

     

    “We hope to open around one lakh swadeshi kendras, especially in villages with less than 3,000 people so that they become self-sufficient and empowered,” says Mr Balkrishnan of Patanjali Ayurved.

     

    BETTING ON HEALTH, CULTURE

    So what ties spirituality with consumer goods? “Once you come into the spiritual path, you understand how it is connected with the body and mind. You tend to become conscious of chemicals being used on your body and prefer more organic food,” says CR Sudarshan, a volunteer at Art of Living’s ayurvedic clinic and its retail chain Divine Shop in Bangalore.

     

    Sant Shri Asharam ji Ashram’s brochures say its products extend the benefits of “the pristine rishi culture to the masses at lowest cost possible”. Patanjali Ayurved is pitching its products as “swadeshi,” claiming they are at least 30% cheaper than national brands.

     

    Inputs from Sagar Malviya in Mumbai

     

    Source:The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2012, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

     

     

     

  • In Freaking News, which will now appear every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    Freaking News: Making sense of the army revelations

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Not surprisingly, the extraordinary revelations coming out of the army have consumed most of our days and nights. Kudos must go to DNA for first carrying the letter, which the army chief sent to the prime minister, about our lack of defence preparedness. Of course amidst all the high-decibel hot air about “high treason” and calls for sacking, we have as usual wandered into all kinds of marginal territories and taken a little time to put matters in perspective.

     

    Arnab Goswami on Times Now felt great shock that former prime minister Deve Gowda’s son Kumaraswamy said that arms dealers had tried to approach his father through him. Twitter took this as a joke with someone pointing out that Deve Gowda probably never took up the offer because he was asleep at the time. The innocence of television – is it endearing, annoying or just so put on?

     

    On NDTV and CNN-IBN, there were sometimes back to back discussions on the same subject with different anchors and guests. No great purpose was served by any of these – people who once wore uniforms claimed that the uniform-wearers were all purer than the driven snow, defence analyst Ajai Shukla said everyone always knew that India was badly prepared except probably Parliamentarians. Tarun Vijay of the BJP took great exception to being called ignorant but was told that he didn’t know what he was talking about for all his troubles. Brajesh Mishra felt that this government had spent too much money on development and “giving money to villages” and other unimportant stuff like that instead of presumably spending it all on national security. Luckily there was very little Chandan Mitra in all this.

     

    It, therefore, took the newspapers to explain to us the inner workings of the Tatra-Vectra-BEML deal, the connection between Ural trucks and army chief VK Singh and the problems with defence procurement. To be fair to Mishra however, he also said that the armed forces wasted time testing equipment in the snow, desert, mountains, plains, wind, water and so on till everything had become obsolete. All former uniform-wearers blamed the bureaucracy for the same.

     

    At the end of it all, you had to read the papers to find out who was who and who was doing what to who. This is a familiar pattern now and perhaps TV continues to be the saving grace for newspapers which have to make sense of the sound and fury. We now need some comprehensive stories on what appears to be some sort of internecine warfare within the army. It would also be good to know where the other service chiefs stand on all this.

     

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    As a break from all this, was the BRICS summit which just concluded in Delhi. TV did focus on that as well but sometimes when the reporters babble on and on saying the same thing in 16 different ways to guarantee their 2 minutes of air time, your eyes just glaze over. The business channels, however, had more focused coverage, including interviews with industrialists and so on. BBC and CNN were also more interested in the summit than in our military mis-manoeuvres.

     

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    A quick look at Pakistani papers this morning showed that in spite of all the fears of our former generals with moustaches quivering with rage, the Indian army’s lack of preparedness has not consumed them.

     

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    The Hindu has written a very welcome editorial, if a little late, slamming spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar for his ridiculous comment that government schools are breeding Naxals. Does the media usually treat them too kindly?

     

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    The felicitation for Sachin Tendulkar by Mukesh Ambani provided the relief factor. TV, of course, pointed out that Bollywood attended in full force, leaving out the industrialists, politicians, artistes, literati and other movers and shakers in evidence. Where Bollywood ends, India ends I guess.