Direct Selling health and wellness brand Herbalife claims to spend about 3.6% which is $24.3 million of its net sales on marketing and advertising. “As for the Indian Premier League (IPL), it accounts for close to 17% which is $4.1 million of our total marketing spending. The partnership and sponsorship with the IPL are of prime importance to us because we have seen a lot of growth in tier-2 and tier-3 cities,” Ajay Khanna, Senior VP and MD of Herbalife, told BrandWagon Online. As per its latest filings with the US Stock Exchange, the company net sales in India stood at $677.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2022.
The company’s overall net sales stood at $5204.4 million, for the year ended December 31, 2022. The advertising costs, including company sponsorships at a global level, were expensed as incurred and amounted to approximately $46.8 million, for the year ended December 31, 2022. According to Khanna, the company will continue to partner with various sporting events, “We are not going to slow down on our partnership with sporting events because it fits with us perfectly as far as our vision and mission are concerned,” added.
The company claims that while it started off as a global nutrition company, it now aims to change its positioning globally as a public health and wellness organisation. As for India, it will continue to invest and develop more region-specific products. It opened its research and development centre called the ‘Center of Excellence’ in India. “ We also plan to invest in ramping our distribution through would go into building the infrastructure. We want to take these products closer to the people besides making these products accessible to consumers in tier-2 and tier-3 cities,” he added.
The company claims that its main selling product in India is Formula 1 shakes, which operate in the space of weight management and wellness. “The biggest advantage about India is we have been able to cater to the local palates of the Indian masses. For example, Formula 1 Kulfi or Rose Kheer are only specific to the Indian palate. These are not available anywhere. Kulfi is at the top, followed by Rose Kheer and then mango, dark chocolate, banana, caramel, among others,” he added.
In its results, the direct selling company declared that as of December 31, 2022, in India it had approximately 6.2 million members, including 2.9 million preferred members. It further said that it has two million distributors in the markets where it has established these two categories and 0.3 million sales representatives and independent service providers in China. “Preferred Customers is another program which was launched in 2017 in India. This segment has grown year-on-year and contributed about 25.6% of India’s total volume points,” he said.