Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) products promoted by spiritual leaders could flood the market in the near future giving the established corporate players a run for their money.
According to a report prepared by Edelweiss Research, there is “renewed aggression” in the market by Sri Sri Ayurveda (SSA) of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living after the success of Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali brand of products.
Edelwiess says other spiritual gurus who can enter the FMCG race are Dera Sacha Sauda’s Guru Ram Rahim, Aurobindo Ashram, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. “In particular, we are seeing renewed aggression (mass media, events, more products) from Sri Sri Ayurveda (SSA). SSA is riding on brand equity of its founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar/Art of Living and has a huge captive base (370mn followers across the world). It has a wide range of personal care products, dietary supplements and food products and plans to expand in many more categories,” the Edelweiss report says.
It says that SSA’s limited success till date is attributable to limited distribution and brand visibility. “SSA is beginning to use mass media, point of sale advertising and decent digital presence (has an app, available on own/other websites); at the World Cultural Festival, Kishore Biyani expressed his openness to discuss selling SSA products at Future Group stores (similar to tie-up with Patanjali),”
Edelwiess points out though SSA is lagging considerably behind Patanjali, it has a wide range of products and “is planning to expand its presence in breakfast cereals, cookies, atta, oils, spices, ready-to-cook items and a range of organic staples for select markets.”
SSA products are primarily sold through 600 franchise stores and ‘Divine Shops’ set up at Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s gatherings and are already available online on key sites like bigbasket.com, amazon.com and its own dedicated site http://www.sattvastore.com. On the anvil are 2,500 stores across India by 2017. Tie ups with modern trade chains are also in progress (a major growth driver for Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali). SSA has a Sri Sri Ayurveda app for Android and iPhones, Edelweiss mentions.