Patanjali teams up with top foreign ecomm firms

NEWDELHI: After criticizing multinational companies for “looting” India for years, yoga guruturned-businessman Baba Ramdev, on Tuesday said his company Patanjali Ayurved Ltd has tied up with eight e-commerce companies—all of them owned by foreign entities or investors.

Patanjali Ayurved plans to leverage the online marketplaces to boost its reach, aiming to take its products “from Haridwar to Har Dwar” (Haridwar, where the company is located, to every doorstep).

Besides its own website, Patanjali will now sell its products across online marketplaces including Amazon India, Flipkart, Paytm, BigBasket, Shopclues, Grofers and online medicine sellers Netmed and 1MG to sell its products. “We believe our partnerships with e-commerce platforms will help increase the reach of Patanjali products to more and more consumers in urban and rural regions,” Ramdev said, adding that Patanjali targets to generate more than ₹1,000 crore from the e-commerce channel in the first year.

Ramdev, however, indicated that Patanjali may miss its selfset revenue target of crossing ₹20,000 crore in the year ended March 31, 2018.

“This year there has been a set of hiccups. Not just for Patanjali, but for everyone,” Ramdev said, responding to Mint’s question.