Sri Sri Ayurveda Takes A Leaf Out Of Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Playbook With ‘Ojasvita’
Sri Sri Ayurveda launches malt drink with Sindhu as a brand ambassador.
Spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s consumer products brand Sri Sri Ayurveda, launched Ojasvita, a health drink, as it gears up to take on yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali and other multinational consumer goods giants.
Ojasvita was unveiled by Olympic silver medalist PV Sindhu and chief National Coach for the Indian Badminton team Padmabushan P Gopichand, who have been signed on as brand ambassadors. The drink will be available in six flavours including chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, mango and Ragi. The 200 gram packs are priced at Rs 120.
Sri Sri Ayurveda has a range of more than 200 products and is available at main hypermarkets and will eventually be sold at local ‘kirana’ stores.
The company plans to launch more products in the personal care space and home care space, in this financial year, and is looking to expand through the franchisee route, Tej Katpitia, the chief marketing officer told BloombergQuint in an interview.
Here are edited excerpts from that conversation.
What other products can we see from Sri Sri Ayurveda going ahead?
Today, we have launched Ojasvita, which is our health drink, we will definitely launch more products under the Ojasvita label going ahead in the coming months and years, more specialised products for different age groups and different genders. We are also expanding the personal care category, we have a toothpaste, Sudanta, which is doing very well and we will add variants to our toothpaste category. We will also launch more products in the personal care and food space. In this financial year and in the coming years, you will see a few releases in detergents.
In the personal care space, which are the segments you will emphasise on?
We do have a healthy range, we have facewash, soaps, shampoos, hairoils and we have variants in these, which we are going to expand.
How are you pricing your products?
Our prices are pretty much at par with the market and some products are at a small premium, I wouldn’t put ourselves as a premium price brand, but, certainly we are at par with competition.
How do you plan to expand?
The primary driving factor has been demand in general. We have make sure our availability increases. The franchisee model is one way of doing that. Apart from this, we will make our products are available at departmental and kirana stores. We have close to 1,300 outlets currently, and by the end of this financial year, we will expand that to about 2,000 outlets.
Will Sri Sri Ravi Shankar be the brand ambassador for Sri Sri Ayurveda?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji is a spiritual leader and is the ambassador of peace. His name being associated with the brand is great in itself.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has international followers as well. Are you looking at tapping the international audience?
We are already selling in certain countries. We are selling in the U.S., several countries in Europe, Oman, Canada, Malaysia, Singapore and a few more countries. The thing with ayurveda is the regulatory environment is different in every country. We are getting good support from the government to take our products overseas.