Mr. Ravi Prasad is the President and CEO of the Bangalore-based Himalaya Drug Company, a privately-held company making Ayurvedic products since 1930. He joined the company in 1991 and has been instrumental in taking it to 56 countries. He launched the consumer products division called ‘Ayurvedic Concepts’ and also integrated the different business divisions under the umbrella brand, ‘Himalaya’.

Before joining Himalaya, Mr. Prasad had worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 10 years. He is an MBA from the Asian Institute of Management, Philippines.

Excerpts from an interview with Akshay B Iyer:

What was the performance like in the last fiscal year and what was the contribution of each division? How much did exports contribute to the performance?

In the fiscal year 2003-04, the company’s turnover was Rs. 350 crore. The pharmaceutical division contributed Rs. 195 crore, while the consumer health and personal care divisions contributed Rs. 45 crore each. The contribution of animal health and exports was Rs. 15 crore and Rs. 50 crore respectively.

What is the outlook for this year?

We are very positive and expect to maintain a healthy growth rate at about 20 – 25 per cent.

What are the company’s plans for 2004 – 05?

We will continue our brand building efforts and work towards making Himalaya a ‘wellness’ brand for the complete family. We will also work towards beefing up our distribution and marketing efforts to reach the target markets and consumers. The overall consolidation and strengthening of the brand will be the key focus. We also plan to increase the number of our retail outlets to 100 and increase the number of shop-in-shops from 125 to 250 in 2004-05. We also have three retail outlets covering Abu Dhabi, Sri Lanka and Cayman Islands. We will soon be commencing work to construct a new, state-of-the-art, international grade manufacturing and R & D facility spread over 200 acres of land in Bangalore. This will be Himalaya’s second R & D and manufacturing facility. The plant is being built with an outlay of Rs. 165 crore.

Where is the manufacturing unit located and what’s the daily output?

Our manufacturing unit is based in Makali, Bangalore, with a daily output capacity of over one crore tablets and over one lakh syrup bottles daily.

What is the size of the FMHG market and what’s Himalaya’s share in the pie?

Though no market research has been conducted on the size of the herbal healthcare market, we estimate that OTC constitutes about 5 per cent of the Rs. 19,000 crore healthcare industry in India.

Since the company lays a great deal of emphasis on R & D, how much of the budget is allocated to this department and what’s the manpower at the disposal of this department?

Himalaya’s R & D policy states that no investment is too much when it comes to scientifically creating safe drugs and therapies. Himalaya prides itself on being a completely research-oriented company. Each Himalaya product undergoes atleast 10 years of research and clinical trials before it reaches the market. We have over 80 scientists working in the R & D division.

What made the company adopt a new unified brand policy in 2001?

With the products being widely accepted by consumer and medical fraternities in over 50 countries, the aim was making Himalaya the world’s leading, herbal healthcare brand. Since we had various products under different brand names in the global market, a critical step in our globalization drive was to bring together all our products under one brand umbrella. Our brand name ‘Himalaya’ strikes a chord with consumers all over the world and we are working towards making Himalaya, India’s first truly international herbal healthcare brand.

The company was started with a vision to bring Ayurveda to the society. How has Himalaya done in this regard in your opinion?

Today the brand Himalaya is synonymous with well-researched pharmaceutical grade herbal health and personal care products. As we have for the past 74 years, we will continue to work towards developing safe pharmaceutical-grade herbal health and personal care products for the market and ensure that herbal health products are popular with consumers.