Patanjali embraces discounting after a slowdown in growth

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Sep 14, 2018

Patanjali, a fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) company that previously eschewed discounting and enjoyed rapid growth, has now allowed some retailers such as Big Bazaar and Reliance Fresh to discount its products.

In the previous fiscal year, Patanjali’s growth slowed down for the first time since it enjoyed exponential growth for the previous four years. However, the business is still expanding its product categories and will soon start retailing cow’s milk. The business is also working on its messaging app Kimbho despite security setbacks. The brand has covered a large number of product categories in a short space of time ranging from cosmetics, healthcare, food, clothing, and more.

During the five day lonf “Mahabachat” sale at Big Bazaar, around 24 Patanjali products were discounted by between five and 25 percent on the e-commerce site. This was the first time that the site had discounted Patanjali products since it began retailing them in 2015.

Reliance Industries’ Reliance Fresh also discounted Patanjali products for the first time recently. Previously, the e-commerce store was under instruction not to discount Patanjali goods but it was finally granted permission. Livemint reported that experts in the industry are seeing this as a sign that Patanjali is relinquishing some control on how its products are retailed through third party sellers.

So far, Patanjali has not discounted products on its own platforms but, if it allows other businesses to do so, the brand is certainly more open to the idea now. Patanjali was one of the first brands to capitalise on the growing consumer demand for natural FMCG products but now a host of other brands have emerged and the market is more competitive. Despite this, the brand is one of the most well-known in the industry and hopes to become India’s largest FMCG companies by 2021, according to brand spokesperson S.K. Tijariwala.