From Gurukul To Gainful

Rapid rise of Patanjali products in India has enshrined an unlikely billionaire.

- Megha Bahree

Every day some 300 trucks roll out of a 150-acre manufacturing complex on the outskirts of Haridwar, one of India’s holiest cities. The cartons of juices and herbal candy, toothpaste and soap, flour and spices, and a variety of herbal medicines to cure seemingly everything, including headaches, arthritis, asthma and high LDL cholesterol, are destined for sale in every corner of the country.

This plant, its biggest, supplies roughly 60% of the output of India’s fastest-growing consumer goods major, Patanjali Ayurved. Its revenue grew nearly tenfold in the four years to the March 2016 fiscal year, to $758 million. The feverish growth has minted one of the country’s newest billionaires, Acharya Balkrishna, who owns 98.5% of the unlisted company, with an estimated wealth of $2.5 billion.

Balkrishna’s office is in a corridor of a sprawling 200- bed ayurved (traditional Indian medicine) hospital, a short drive from the factory. Across the street is a 10-acre nursery he oversees where nearly a thousand varieties of plants are grown and studied, with a new research lab meant to explore, among other things, the impact of certain herbs on animals.

“What you see today is not what it has always been,” says Balkrishna, 44. “Even in philosophy they say you shouldn’t trust everything you see. Either it will be less or more.”