SUMIT DAYAL FOR FORBES22 | FORBES ASIA NOVEMBER 2016
mand jumped. In 2006 Pa-
tanjali Ayurved was regis-
tered and within a year start-
ed manufacturing products at
Haridwar such as gooseber-
ry juice, shampoos, soaps and
toothpaste in plants aided
by state tax breaks given to
manufacturers.
A second major row took
place in 2011 when a Con-
gress Party-led coalition was
in power and the current In-
dian government’s Bharati-
ya Janata Party was in op-
position. This was the sum-
mer of discontent when, after
a wave of political scandals,
activists from across India
joined together to protest cor-
ruption. Ramdev was among
them (though Balkrishna ex-
aggerates Ramdev’s role as being central). One night police
surrounded Ramdev and his supporters. To evade arrest,
he swapped his safron robe for a woman’s traditional out-
fit but was caught on camera, resulting in a rare moment of
public ridicule. (The company says there was a plot to as-
sassinate him and his attempted getaway was to avoid that.)
At the time, Ramdev swore to find a way to defeat the Con-
gress Party and says he was instrumental in nominating the
current prime minister, Narendra Modi. (Others say Modi’s
Hindu nationalist allies have given Ramdev a critical boost.)
Soon after the midnight police bust, scores of charg-
es were filed against Patanjali and its management, with al-
legations ranging from money laundering to tax evasion.
Balkrishna was imprisoned for a month on charges of car-
rying a false passport—the government said he was a Nepali
passing himself of as an Indian. Some of these cases, includ-
ing the tax evasion and the false passport, are ongoing. (The
company denies the charges.)
Although some charges were dropped after the Modi
government swept into power in 2014, Patanjali and its man-
agement had a trying time. Balkrishna recalls a phase when,
out of fear that the government might plant drugs in the fac-
tories, he hired snifer dogs to scout not only the premis-
es but also employees’ lunch boxes to ensure no one was at-
tempting sabotage.
Today Balkrishna tells these anecdotes with a triumphant
laugh. “First Brinda Karat went after us, and now she and
her party are nonentities; then the Congress went after us,
and now they are out of power,” he says. “The benefit was
that the nation came to trust Patanjali. We grew, thanks to
these politicians. The feeling was that had we been wrong,gious channels. Out of that grew Vedic Broadcasting, a com-
pany through which they own five TV channels that would
become Ramdev’s medium for reaching a vast audience to
extol yoga and ayurved. Followers would ask for cures for
various ailments, so Balkrishna brought ayurved doctors as
well as minitrucks loaded up with medicines to the camps.
The yoga camps begat clinics, a chain of which today is a
key retail outlet for Patanjali’s medicines and consumer
products.
“There was no commercial planning. It was all driven by
demand from people that we responded to,” Balkrishna says.
But the duo had momentum for larger-scale produc-
tion and sale. They already owned the 50 acres of the land
where their factory is today. With the parcel as collateral and
a handful of well-of followers as backers, they secured a $40
million loan from state-owned Punjab National Bank to get
the business going. Early on they also decided to keep the
shareholding close. Since Ramdev had taken a vow of asceti-
cism, the lion’s share went to Balkrishna.
Fresh-faced and chatty in his signature all-white outfit of
a sarong and tunic, Balkrishna expounds on controversies
surrounding the business and its brand ambassador.
The first big one came in 2005. Brinda Karat of the
Communist Party of India accused Divya Pharmacy, a busi-
ness unit of the charitable trust, of paying workers poorly
and of using dubious materials in its medicines. Others sus-
pected it was merely repackaging products made by estab-
lished firms. (The company denied the allegations.) Divya
had just set up a new lab, and in response to the media
frenzy that followed the charges, Balkrishna recalls, the
company showed its modern operation on camera. De-
FORBES ASIA
BALKRISHNA’S BOUNTY
Traditional oven used to make medicines at Patanjali Ayurved’s factory outside Haridwar.