Patanjali Ayurved is on a mission to take over your wardrobe, too.
Yoga guru Ramdev has announced plans to expand his company’s business beyond soaps and shampoos to clothing. The 50-year-old, who usually sports a saffron dhoti and stole, wants his Rs5,000-crore annual turnover consumer goods company to stitch everything from jeans to langots—a traditional undergarment or loincloth worn by Indian men (and often worn by Ramdev himself during his yoga classes).
“Next year we will be making (a) foray into textiles on a big scale,” Ramdev said at the inaugural session of the Global Investors Summit in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, on Oct. 22. “People are only talking about jeans, but we plan to make the complete range, including kurta pajama, saree, coat, and langot,” he added.
India’s readymade apparel market is estimated at $27 billion, according to Edelweiss Broking. Ramdev is eager to own a piece of this market as he is looking to double Patanjali’s turnover by next year.
Though the yoga guru did not share specific details, he said the company will add apparel—ethnic and western—to its existing portfolio of soaps, ghee, biscuits, and more. He has been in talks with top apparel makers in India to launch a clothing line soon, media reports have said.
Earlier this year, Ramdev had revealed plans to create a more “Indianised” version of jeans. This was to be an alternative to denim wear that “comes from abroad or are manufactured here by western companies” based on “designs and cultural patterns of foreign countries,” Acharya Balakrishna, managing director at Patanjali, told the Economic Times in September.
“Jeans (are) a western concept and there are two things we can do with western concepts. Either boycott them or adopt them but customise them to suit our traditions,” Balakrishna said.