Patanjali announces partnership with 8 e-commerce companies

Baba Ramdev-led Patanjali Ayurved on Tuesday announced its partnership with eight e-commerce companies in a move to push sales of its products. Accordingly, the entire range of Patanjali products would now be available on the platforms of Amazon, Grofers, Shopclues, Flipkart, BigBasket, 1mg, Paytm Mall and Netmeds. Earlier too, Patanjali products were available on e-commerce platforms, but they were sourced from either the company’s distributor Pittie Group or its brick-and-mortar stores. With this tie-up, the e-commerce firms will be able to source the products directly from the factories of warehouses of Patanjali. “In terms of revenue we have set a target of more than Rs 1,000 crore from the e-commerce business in FY18. Last month when we ran a pilot we sold goods worth Rs 10 crore in 15-20 days, especially FMCG products, so we are hopeful that we will be able to meet the target, as far e-commerce business is concerned,” Ramdev said announcing the partnerships.

Patanjali claims to have created an ecosystem which helps to settle at least 1 million orders every day. The company estimates that the share of online sales will contribute 15% to the total revenue in years to come. According to Hari Menon, co-founder and CEO, BigBasket, which first started selling Patanjali products in 2011, “the tie-up not only allows us to directly source products but in future certain Patanjali products related to grocery can be launched exclusively on online grocery platform likes ours, while lifestyle products can be exclusively launched on platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, etc”. Moreover, e-commerce platforms will also now have access to content and other promotion-related details which can be further used by these firms to market Patanjali products. However, Patanjali along with e-commerce platforms will not offer discount on its products sold online to maintain a balance with sale from its retail outlets. Additionally, Patanjali medicines which require prescription will be sold only through Netmeds and 1mg. Patanjali Ayurved claims to have created an annual production capacity worth Rs 50,000 crore. Apart from its units which are currently operational in Haridwar and Tejpur (Assam), the company said work is in progress at full speed in Noida, Nagpur and Indore.

An export unit is also expected to come up at the Mihan SEZ, Nagpur (Maharashtra). With this, Patanjali will be able to export its products to the UAE, the US, Canada, Europe, South America, African countries besides other countries. As for the number of stores, Balkrishna, MD and CEO, Patanjali Ayurved, said the target is to expand the stores from current 15-20 lakh to 50 lakh by next year. This includes all formats of stores — exclusive, franchise as well as other offline stores. Patanjali claims that it currently has 5,000 exclusive stores. Ramdev further added that Patanjali would be launching its own mineral water — Divyajal — this month. “We are also working on a plan to launch apparel including kidswear to yoga wear for both men and women. We would launch about 3,000 products either this year in Diwali or early next year by January 2019,” he added. However, Ramdev said the company’s plans to enter the hospitality sector by launching its own chain of hotels and restaurants has been dropped.