HARIDWAR, INDIA, April 1, 2016 (New York Times): Baba Ramdev is surrounded by the trappings of any major corporate leader almost anywhere in the world. But Mr. Ramdev is also an Indian swami, having renounced all worldly pleasures and possessions. Famous for bringing yoga to the Indian masses, Mr. Ramdev, 50, is also the leader a group of spiritual men, known here as “babas,” who are marketing healthy consumer items based on the ancient Indian medicinal system of herbal treatments, known as Ayurveda. His rapidly expanding business empire of packaged food, cosmetics and home-care products is eating into the sales of both multinational and Indian corporations.
The babas’ message about the value of traditional Indian ingredients is particularly resonant in the current environment in India, where a prime minister and his political party have built a narrative around the value of ancient Hindu practices, from yoga to reverence for cows. Mr. Ramdev is the most prominent of a growing group of brand-building babas, whose ranks include Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the founder of the Art of Living, an Indian spiritual practice, who promotes a line of creams, soaps and shampoos also called Ayurveda.
Mr. Ramdev and his friend and business partner, Acharya Balakrishna, 44, run Patanjali Ayurved Limited from a corporate headquarters in Haridwar, an ancient Indian city on the banks of the Ganges River in Uttarakhand State. In 1994, they founded the first of three charitable trusts, to run a hospital and a university dealing in Ayurvedic medicine, and an ashram. There, they held yoga camps and free health checkups at which they dispensed Ayurveda treatments, which are largely herbal. Before long, they had set up a manufacturing plant for Ayurveda products.
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