A woman neatly clad in an off-white sari receives you into a cool white ambience. There's also a deliberate resplendence of dark green as in the border of her sari, the tops of the bottles on the shelves, the leaflets and a familiar logo with its orange swirl.

It's one more exclusive store in Bangalore, part of a long chain that is the new face of Himalaya's Herbal Healthcare, there for you to browse, query, discover and make a buy.

Who says 70-plus is too old an age to innovate? Ayurveda, after all, is vintage. And when you have a pure-play prescription Pharma company evolving into a modern-day promoter of family wellness, it must be the new-age health consumerism that's at work.

Ravi Prasad, President & CEO of the Rs. 350-crore Himalaya Drug Company, would vouch for that.

Until 1998-99, Himalaya was pushing its myriad therapeuticals through doctors. Today, its fast changing landscape has a year-old Consumer Healthcare (CH) division with six fertile brands; the company has sprouted 57 exclusive 'Himalaya Herbals' retail stores and across 125 multi-brand shop-in-shops or S & Ss across the country, pushing the Himalaya brands across counters. All this is apart from the older departmental stores and chemists.

Ask Ravi Prasad, and he'd say a long-haul Himalayan trek has just taken off for its FMHGs (fast moving health goods).

If the personal care line launched in 1999 (then called Ayurvedic Concepts) gave a new dimension to Himalaya's consumer push, it was Pure Herbs that really started Himalaya's OTC journey from March 2002 onwards. Pure Herbs is a Rs. 15-crore, 12-product bouquet under the Consumer Health division. It's Neem, Lasuna, Shallaki, Ashvagandha and Karela in capsules are among top sellers; along with Chyavanaprasha (2002), Forest Honey (May 2003) and Throat Drops (October 2003), it has made the CH division a new front to watch out for. CH generated Rs. 45-crore turnover in it's first year.

Ravi Prasad says a clear shift is taking place across the globe in healthcare, from advised to self-help, and Himalaya is not going to be left out of it. Over-the-counter sales, he says, form roughly 20 per cent of the $ 165-billion healthcare industry in the US and five per cent of the Rs. 19,000 crore industry in India. It's also a trend that other Pharma players are not ignoring. Many have their own stores or chains, be it single or multi-brand, from Morepen, Schwabe, Zydus Cadila, to Apollo, Health & Glow, Medicine Shoppe and Pill & Powder. And so, Himalaya will be adding new OTC/CH products and more stores to push them.

As the cost of curative healthcare gets higher the world over, preventive healthcare, often self-medication, gains the upper hand. Take the biggest market for healthcare - the US - and Ravi Prasad says OTC numbers there have doubled as elsewhere in the developed world, compared to prescription products.

"People are taking health in their hands for cough, cold and simple digestive problems. In fact, this has reached such a stage in the US that statins (cholesterol fighters) may be advertised but along with necessary cautions. And why not, for today's users are informed, self-reliant and responsible," is his argument.

FMHG is a strategic, fast-moving and important part of the company, agrees R.V. Raman, Business Head, CH. His products span a price band of 50 paise (lozenges) to Rs. 145 (honey). Many more are lined up and the division is poised for 50 per cent growth this fiscal.

Not only are the multi-crore TV and print campaigns out for the latest additions: Shahicool Herbal Sharbat and Gripe Water, Himalaya has also renewed its contracts with cricketers Yuvraj Singh and Zaheer Khan as promoters of its Chyavanaprasha, which has bagged a five per cent share or Rs. 17 crore in its crowded market segment.

It also went in for innovative strategies such as tying up with Café Coffee Day for joint branding and new recipes with honey; and with Jet Airways to push them in-flight at the business class.

During fiscal 2003-04, Throat Drops fetched Rs. 8 crore and Forest Honey Rs. 5 crore, while Himalaya expects the new launches to add Rs. 8 crore. "This testifies to the fact that the international trend of self-care is taking root in India and is here to stay," says Ravi Prasad. "That's going to change the way healthcare industry is going to do business in India."

On the retail front, what began as a lone company outlet in 2000 to supplement shelf spaces of chemists, has unfolded into a countrywide retail franchised chain. Ms. Sujata Keshavan Guha, Co-founder and Managing Director of Ray + Keshavan Design, who is behind the makeover of a brand-eclipsed company and its stores into one Himalaya entity, says they were created to drive up sales, draw serious consumers from a broad spectrum of age and gender. Their statement is to 'do-good', not be flashy or intimidating, yet modern and shopper-friendly. They are electronically linked with the Pharma, R & D panel and the CRM Cell. Says Ravi Prasad, "Consumers have changed and they are looking for something different. They are also looking for ambience and convenience in shopping. The emphasis at all our stores will be on access, experience and service."

Apples aren't Oranges but brand consultant, Harish Bijoor sees the Himalaya outlets as the premium Allen Solly-type exclusive stores existing along with the mass-market Peter England-like FMCG shop-in-shops. "Pharmaceuticals is a hard category and if you want to do retail - because that's where the market and volumes are - you must make that as soft as possible."

"Soon," says Ravi Prasad, "all our stores across the world (Abu Dhabi, Colombo, Cayman Islands for now) will have the same look. Branding the store will increase volume and enhance customer loyalty." Some 175 sales reps work in the showrooms and S & Ss.

While OTC may be getting the push, it's the Rs. 195-crore Pharma range that drives the topline. The prescription or ethical route, backed by a field force of 500, will remain the core of Himalaya strategy, especially for serious medicine such as anti-hypertensive Serpina or prostate therapy Himplasia.

His plan is to make it 100 retail outlets by 2005. Already present as S & Ss at the likes of Pill & Powder, 98.4 Degrees, Shopper's Stop, LifeStyle and Foodworld, Himalaya also has some more interesting offers and the next thing is to raise them to 250.

As to what exactly the stores have done for Himalaya's numbers, Ravi Prasad wants to tell only next year.