Patanjali is one of the few brands that make up the very backbone of the Indian consumerist identity. With a bevy of marketing tactics to push its plethora of products, the company has become one of the icons of the Indian economy.
The privately-owned Indian FMCG Patanjali has a vast audience in India, no matter how young, there is nobody who doesn’t know the brand’s name. Let us take a look at the marketing strategy of Patanjali and how it utilized people’s beliefs as a marketing tool.
Patanjali – Background and Vision
Patanjali Today
Patanjali Marketing Campaigns
Key Marketing Strategies of Patanjali
How Patanjali Used Common Beliefs as a Marketing Tool
Patanjali – Background and Vision
The 1990s in India saw the floodgates open and the global economy ushered in a new era of consumerism. As international companies and MNCs trickled in and became a deluge, the needs of Indians altered slowly but definitively. The new millennium was flush with international goods, but the people began to clamour for more homemade production. The swadeshi effect gradually spread like wildfire, and companies began to take advantage.
Onto this scene came Patanjali, an Indian company with a vision that stretched beyond present profit quarters and into the future. Indian yogi Baba Ramdev and Acharya Balkrishna came together in 2006 to create a health and awareness brand that focused on the present needs of the people. The brand was created and heavily relied on the image of using ancient Indian Ayurved ingredients to detoxify both mind and body.
The main aim of Patanjali is to establish and nurture a society that promotes health first and foremost. Therefore, the brand encourages not only its health and lifestyle goods but also ancient Indian practices like yoga. It aims to create life-changing goods that will help prevent as well as cure acute ailments through ingredients that are 100% natural.
Patanjali relies not just on the veracity of products but also on Baba Ramdev’s claims of technological imports to get the most from Ayurvedic aid and literature. The brand and its founders use various forms of marketing to promote its products. Many of which have ensured that the company continues to flourish almost 16 years after its conception. Through meticulous brand promotion and successful trade systems, Patanjali seems to be on track to becoming a face brand of India itself.
Patanjali Today
Today, Patanjali has become an organization worth crores. It is a leading health and wellness brand that competes against the biggest age-old names in operation – Hindustan Unilever, Colgate, Dabur, ITC, Godrej Consumer Products, and more.
As of 2022, Acharya Balkrishna is the owner of the company with 94% shares under his control. The rest are divided among individual shareholders. As the chairperson, managing director, and chief executive officer, Balakrishna is also a key operator. Baba Ramdev is the face and brand ambassador of Patanjali, while his younger brother Ram Bharat is the de facto CEO. the total income for the financial year 2019 for Patanjali was ₹4,345 crores (US$590 million). With a net income of ₹590 crores (US$80 million) in the fiscal year of 2021, Patanjali has generated a revenue of ₹30,000 crores (US$4.02 billion) in the same year.
The varied products make up for than 900 items and the organization sells them grouped under the following goods brackets:
- Ayurvedic medicine
- Consumer goods
- Healthcare
- Personal care
- Cosmetics
- Cleaning agents
- Beverages
- Fashion
- Foods items
With headquarters situated in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, India, Patanjali serves customers mainly in the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East. The brand has over 2,00,000 employees and controls the following subsidiaries:
- Paridhan
- Ruchi Soya
- Herboved
- Patanjali Renewable Energy Pvt Ltd
- Advance Navigation and Solar Technologies
Sarika Anand
Patanjali Marketing Campaigns
When it comes to marketing products, Patanjali uses its brand platform to spread awareness. The question that naturally arises is: how does Patanjali have such a devoted brand following? The answer lies in how popular brands of medicines used for treatments ply in India. The developing country attempts to offer affordable medicines to the socially backward and poverty-ridden majority. However, the elitist privatization of healthcare and extreme costs of life-saving medication does not allow people below the poverty line to access treatments.
When such a vast avenue for health is closed off, alternative medicines become popular. The most crucial factor that boosts such alternatives is affordability. If alternative forms of medicine are marketed as cheap, over-the-counter, and somewhat trustworthy, people will gravitate towards them. This is where Patanjali uses its trump card to overpower allopathic medication and treatment. It promotes very affordable models of healthcare and ensures that the products are easy to acquire for anyone. Most Indians, no matter their literacy levels, are familiar with Ayurvedic medicines. Despite the lack of concrete results in studies that attempt to prove the adequacy of Ayurveda, the familiarity that people associate with this alternative cure is enough to boost sales.
Baba Ramdev, through his platform, has helped create an image of the brand that is acceptable and popular, especially for the socially and financially challenged. His association with the brand has helped increase its visibility. Ramdev liberally promotes the Patanjali name in his innumerable yoga camps and shows. Moreover, consumer psychology maintains that the more people get to know the faces behind a company, the more they are likely to remain loyal. Ramdev’s direct communication and interaction with his buyers is a major factor in the brand’s successful image.
The consumer goods company came just behind the chocolate-making giant Cadbury and skincare line Glow & Lovely (formerly Fair & Lovely) as the most advertised brands on television in India in 2016. Moreover, the expenditure attributed to advertising the products is very low. The brand prefers quantity over quality – its innumerable advertisements, promoting similar products, are testament.
Costs are also low because of Ramdev’s promotions in yoga camps and reality shows like India’s Best Dramebaaz(sponsored by Patanjali). The camps are excellent sources of high consumer populations. Selling the brand is a matter of simplicity and convenience through Ramdev’s oratorship. Marketing strategist of Patanjali has made their way into the digital space through the internet and eCommerce opportunities.
Key Marketing Strategies of Patanjali
The process of marketing a brand is as crucial as the brand itself, if not more. Without the right sort of marketing, introducing a brand and its products becomes next to impossible. Consumers will not be interested in a product without some brand recognition. Sometimes, the brand exceeds the product (Philips, Godrej, Tata, etc.), and this is the result of excellent marketing strategies.
The main reason why Patanjali continues to flourish in a market despite millions of obstacles is because of its subtly sophisticated marketing tactics. The marketing team behind the brand is why Patanjali is so widely accepted, especially among certain sections of society. The brand continues to come out on top, despite its weaknesses, scandals, threats, etc., again and again purely because of the way the brand markets itself. Let us take a look at why mainstream society is attracted to Patanjali and what Patanjali does to retain and expand its consumer base.
The entire foundation of the brand is heavily reliant on the image of a Pre-Lapsarian India, so to speak. The picture is complete with ancient monuments and kings and rulers akin to the image of the gods. The allusion is to the fact that that time, throughout the various eras, was a pure one where health, hygiene, and progress of society were the aim of every individual. Therefore, the goal of the founders is to help the people let go of the burden of the pollution of the mind, body, and soul that the current kalyug (Dark Age) has imposed.
Patanjali offers to transform and improve people’s health using the natural medicines people used in these times. It uses ayurvedic medicines to treat an extensive list of health problems. The treatments are often marketed for a variety of ailments. The brand has come under fire many times in the past for using incorrect treatments to cure illnesses like claiming yoga can cure HIV/AIDs. However, its marketing department continues to walk in the same direction.
Baba Ramdev’s expansive yoga exercises are also a part of the Patanjali regiment. The televised events often pair up with the company. Ramdev expounds on the importance of Ayurveda and yoga to relieve the body from diseases, both as a precautionary and a curative solution. Ramdev also claims that yoga is better medicine than any other therapy or prescription for mental health disorders, often demonizing allopathic or psychiatric cures to his followers. These claims remain unsubstantiated. However, the benefits of yoga are what also keeps Ramdev so popular. The majority of his fanbase continues to follow the regimens he prescribes.
How Patanjali Used Common Beliefs as a Marketing Tool
One of the most significant means of spreading awareness for the Patanjali brand is a quiet barter that one of the cofounders has undertaken. While the barter system may seem outdated, its usage falls right on track with Patanjali’s principles. The bartering is not a part of the product sale nor is it a branding venture.
On the contrary, it is a marketing scheme that helps propagate awareness of Patanjali, skewing people’s perceptions and opinions of the brand in its favor. The founders, despite their demand to go back in time to access a more “pure” and “perfect” time in Hindu history, are well aware of modern advantages like great branding. There is no doubt that a company must strive to achieve originality to survive and get ahead of the cut-throat competition. Patanjali’s founders take advantage of certain measures to ensure that the brand stays afloat.
Baba Ramdev, the face of Patanjali, is well aware of the power of the platform he has tirelessly created over the past 20 odd years or so. His persona as a man with a fitness plan is well known. You will not find many places that have not witnessed the antics of Ramdev’s yogic postures that claim to cure all known ailments. His brand of yoga enmeshes Patanjali’s principles seamlessly, thus making it difficult for consumers to extricate the man from the brand. This, however, is what fuels Ramdev’s agenda.
More than two decades of yoga performances have nurtured multiple associations, contacts, and deals based on goodwill. Using these means, Patanjali, by extension Baba Ramdev, has created a social platform to spread awareness of the brand. A constant influx of TV commercials, lurid advertisements, newspaper graphics, billboards, various magazines, social media handles, etc. are the weapons Ramdev uses to bring recognition to Patanjali’s products.
These tools are cunningly crafted to foster and spread the sense of the brand and its offerings. The goal of Patanjali is to utilize all digital, print, and other platforms available to spread recognition and induce loyalty to the brand by ushering in a sense of familiarity. Patanjali aims to secure the quintessential family demographic. Therefore, it heavily relies on television advertisements over the limited platforms of Google and Facebook ads.
In exchange for his presence and significant influence among a major demographic in India, Baba Ramdev barters for a wider scope of audience. The type of people who continue to hold on to their television sets in an age of streaming is usually above the age of 30. They are also usually in a more traditional family setting. These are the two targets of Patanjali’s demographics, so the barter system works out well in terms of promotions and brand recognition.
Roshni Tamta
Conclusion
Using human psychology to push for brand recognition is a humongous part of the very identity of Patanjali. It uses people’s beliefs in old Indian ways of treatment to produce goods. With just the right marketing and offers, Patanjali has become a force to be reckoned with, despite its flaws. The co-founders of the company certainly have a long way to go. They must give up their propensity for spreading misinformation and have room for change. Their regressive attitudes can certainly create obstacles. However, as long as Ramdev and the company can hold on to their relevancy, Patanjali will go on.
FAQs
When was Patanjali Ayurved founded?
Patanjali Ayurved was founded in January 2006.
Who is the owner of Patanjali Ayurved?
Acharya Balkrishna is the owner of the company with 94% shares under his control.
Who is the CEO of Patanjali Ayurved?
Baba Ramdev is the face and brand ambassador of Patanjali, while his younger brother Ram Bharat is the de facto CEO.
What are some of the subsidiaries of Patanjali Ayurved?
Ruchi Soya, Advance Navigation and Solar Technologies Pvt. Ltd., and Herboved Inc are the subsidiaries of Patanjali Ayurved.
