Coming soon at a store near you: Branded clothes from Baba Ramdev
NEWDELHI: After foods, medicines and cosmetics, yoga guruturned-tycoon Baba Ramdev, who discovered the business potential of everything homegrown, is ready to raid the next big consumer market: branded apparel.
Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved Ltd is preparing to launch its ‘swadeshi’ line of clothes for men, women and children by April, his spokesperson S.K. Tijarawala said. The sales target for the first year: ₹5,000 crore.
“Patanjali will have different products in each category – value-for-money clothes for the masses and apparel that would have the snob value meant for the classes. We’ll start with woven clothes, knit wear and machine-made apparel including denims,” said Tijarawala.
While Patanjali is working on a suitable brand name aligned with its ‘swadeshi’ agenda, ‘Paridhan’ (apparel) is one option, Tijarawala said, adding “we may have more than one brand.”
The apparel line will initially be made available across 250 exclusive retail outlets in April 2018, Tijarawala said. Besides the wide network of Patanjali stores, they will also be sold at other apparel retailing outlets across the country, including Kishore Biyani-led Future Group’s Big Bazaar. Patanjali, he said, may also look at selling them through retail outlets managed by Biyani’s Big Bazaar. In October 2015, Future Retail tied up with Patanjali to promote, distribute and market the latter’s products across its outlets in 243 cities. It has already teamed up with a few hundred handloom weavers in northern India. In an interview to Mint in May 2015, Ramdev had said his company would work with handloom weavers to save them from distress and revive the khadi industry.
“Besides, we will have arrangements with apparel makers, and we will set up our own manufacturing units for making clothes,” said Tijarawala, declining to share investment details.
Patanjali is entering a market projected to grow over 9% every year till 2022 from about ₹2 lakh crore in 2012, according to a recent report by retail consulting firm Technopak.
“Extending brands beyond core is always challenging,” said Rajat Wahi, partner, management consulting at Deloitte India. “But the company has shown strong marketing acumen before, and has its own fan following.”
Patanjali Ayurved reported sales of ₹10,561 crore in the year to March 31, almost five times its 2014-15 sales of ₹2,006 crore.
It aims to cross ₹20,000-25,000 crore in sales by 31 March 2018, Ramdev said at a press conference on May 4.