The business suit may be missing, but then Baba Ramdev was never your regular everyday corporate. He looked equally mesmerising and dressed for success in his saffron robes. Flaunting his ever astute sense of what works for his target heartland audience, Baba Ramdev took centre-stage on Tuesday, not to show off any new yoga moves, but in a self-aggrandising display of his business success - and future ambition.
On behalf of his Patanjali business empire, the yoga guru just blew the horn to open its next battleground, this time against ‘videshi’ FMCG giant Unilever. Baba’s prediction? His homegrown success story Patanjali will beat Unilever in turnover by 2025.
That’s just for starters. Ramdev, along with business associate Acharya Balkrishna (who is, technically, the chairman of Patanjali) have bigger plans, ranging from establishing his institution as the repository of research-based innovation and knowledge, as well as launching a spate of new products, lakhs of new jobs, and even a University.
While the media interaction was probably aimed at announcing the intent to launch the FPO of Ruchi Soya, a loss-making company which Patanjali took over and turned into a curiously stupendous profit-maker, it sort of got drowned in the list of claims and aims that started rolling out of the master acrobat's tongue — making India ‘atmanirbhar’ in edible oil, providing 5 lakh jobs in Patanjali for the poor in the next five years. There’s also a university being planned, aiming to induct no less than one lakh students.
He also claimed that Patanjali now has done even more research to take forward our ‘sanathan gyan’ than even the Indian government or World Health Organisation (WHO). “We are taking a holistic approach to bring our traditional knowledge and science together,” he said.
For the record, the Ruchi Soya FPO will be for Rs 4,300 crore, and in typical fashion, he called it a ‘service’ for ‘social prosperity. Ruchi’s present turnover is Rs 16,318 crore, and together with the parent company Patanjali’s turnover, the Baba Ramdev-Balkrishna combine’s homegrown conglomerate now stands in excess of Rs 30,000 crore in turnover.
The date of the FPO is yet to be announced.
