Having established a strong brand equity in emerging ayurvedic drug and herbal personal care market, the 73-year old Himalaya Drug Company has drawn out elaborate plans to expand its operations globally to garner a larger pie of the estimated $62 billion ayurvedic market.

“Plans are being formalised to set up a new R&D centre and manufacturing campus on 200 acre in Bidadi just outside Bangalore, at an estimated cost of Rs 165 crore”, President and CEO of the company Ravi Prasad told The Tribune in an exclusive interview.

The project is scheduled to be completed by 2005. In addition, the company has struck alliances with international partners in countries such as Egypt.

“The focus will be to strengthen distribution and to establish a brand equity for Himalaya through marketing strategy jointly developed with international partners”, he said.

Mr. Prasad said a new brand identity has enabled the Himalaya Drug Company to gain acceptance as a modern Ayurvedic company and the company is now planning to expand its retail network across the country. The company has clocked a turnover of Rs 300 crore in 2002-03.

“Consumer feedback from over 56 countries and India about Himalaya and the complete range of products offered, prompted us to unify all our offerings under the single, global brand ''Himalaya'' in December, 2001”, he said.

At present, Himalaya’s products can broadly be categorised into four main ranges: pharmaceutical, personal care, consumer health and animal health. Prominent among the Himalaya brands is Liv.52, a liver formulation, which is also the flagship brand of the company.

Explaining the rationale behind the brand repositioning strategy, he said the company realised the need to have a “single, coherent brand identity and strategy” in December, 2001. “This resulted in brand unification under a single brand name —Himalaya”, he said.

“Ever since the brand unification in December, 2001, we have received overwhelming response from consumers across the world and in India accepting Himalaya, translating into sales that have picked up since the re-branding”, Mr. Prasad said.

Synergy between Ayurveda and modern medicine is evolving in India. Until recently, the methods of traditional medical systems were “obscure, esoteric and shrouded in mysticism”.

“Modern science, however, is rapidly unlocking the way these methods achieve results. This in turn has led to the arrival of a new planetary medicine using ancient techniques, under scientific management”, he observed.

The new system, broadly categorised under the nomenclature Active Ayurveda, in sync with the tools of modern bio-chemistry, “is helping in rediscovering the ancient wisdom”.

“Active Ayurveda started as a mere glimpse, a peek through the looking glass of the past, which may again become our future. It is developing quickly, so we now understand much better how traditional Ayurvedic formulations, and modern formulations that integrate tradition with modern science, really do work to help rebalance body systems”, he said.

The commercial potential of Ayurveda can also be gauged from the fact that the global market for herbal health care is estimated at $62 billion . In India, the estimated size of herbal health and personal care market is in the range of Rs 2,500 crore to Rs 3,000 crore and it is growing at a growth rate of 15 to 20 per cent per annum.

The global consumer and medical fraternity is fast realising the limitations of the present mainstream health care system. Medical practitioners and consumers who earlier looked at the herbal system as an ''alternative'', are now beginning to integrate it into mainstream health care system as complementary.

“Yes, the future for the herbal industry in serving the personal and health care needs of consumers across the world looks bright and promising”, he said.

At the same time, Mr. Prasad cautioned that the pre-requisite to enter and succeed in the herbal health care segment is a strong R&D backing to create innovative health care products.

“A state-of-the-art R&D forms the driving force in delivering high quality products to meet consumer demand across the world. The challenge is to be able to identify this requirement and direct efforts and investments into cutting edge research and development”, he said.

Moreover, unlike allopathy, where the molecule structure, does not vary, there could be vast differentiation in the herb depending on the place, season and soil it is grown in.