Realizing he’d begun paying truckers a small fortune, Ramdev set up his own logistics company. Production could barely keep up and battalions of trucks left Patanjali factories loaded with products night and day. It was no surprise then that in some places even stores that were not officially carrying Patanjali products put up his pictures over their shopfronts. Ramdev was now associated with everything healthy, everything ‘Indian’ and, automatically, everything he sold was seen as wholesome, pure and good. It had never before been propagated in such an organized fashion. Ayurveda was also catching up in popularity. Pictures of Ramdev loomed over cities, towns and villages. With these measures in place, distribution simply exploded. He puts an Ayurveda doctor in the shop, who prescribes things also available there.’ He has these dedicated distributors and franchisee stores. Gunendar Kapur, a leading retail and consumer executive who had worked for over a decade at Unilever before joining as CEO and president of Reliance Retail, commended the structure: ‘His distribution is very different. Patanjali products’ fired the Bharat Swabhiman sevaks. The idea of ‘serving the country by promoting swadeshi, a.k.a. One thousand of their members were given a salary of Rs5,000 a month and sent off to help Patanjali Ayurveda establish a network of freelance distributors. With Ramdev’s political future in question, the organization had been at a loose end. That is when the Bharat Swabhiman Andolan’s membership was sought to be harnessed. However, translating such an ambitious idea into reality was not easy. After all, ‘It was money without work for them, so they agreed,’ says Patra smiling. Ordinarily, an existing network of distributors and super distributors would have protested such an infringement on their rights, but Patanjali Ayurveda cleverly offered them a 1 per cent commission on all sales made by the freelancers.
In return they would be allowed to use Ramdev’s image for their store branding. These swadeshi kendras were pre-existing stores that would lease part of their shop floor space for Patanjali products. A new network of one lakh ‘swadeshi kendras’ was to be established. The ensuing plan to power such growth required another distribution channel, apart from the arogya and seva kendras, and super distributor network-a network of freelance retailers. Ramdev realized that they could realistically touch the Rs1,000 crore mark soon and that was their next target. Patra’s efforts began to pay off almost immediately: Patanjali Ayurveda’s turnover increased to Rs446 crore in 2012, from Rs317 crore at the end of 2010-11. those months I did not care at all if inventory was moving or not. All Patra asked his employees was: ‘How many super distributors did you make? How many distributors? How many retailers?’ He says, ‘That was their performance yardstick. For the first three months, they had no sales targets at all. Then began the appointment of distributors under the super distributors. Patra appointed some of his top people to liaise with the new super distributors to help them find their bearings.
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