Patanjali struggles to meet demand for products

TIL Desk/Business/New Delhi-Even as Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved aims to double its turnover in the current financial year, it is struggling to meet the demand for its products. Patanjali has signed exclusive deal with Future Group and sells its products through large hypermarkets such as D-Mart, Star Hyper and Reliance. Apart from this, Patanjali products are sold through a large network of shops, Ayurvedic stores and pharmacies.

For instance, a store executive at Star Hyper, run by Trent-Tesco combine, said they had planned to set up a separate section for Patanjali products but couldn’t do so because of erratic supplies. “There’s no point in having a separate rack and displaying a few products on it,” said the executive. According to a senior executive at a large retail chain, the fill rates of Patanjali products are in the range of 40-50 per cent.

On the other hand, multinational consumer goods companies such as Nestlé and HUL have a fill rate of 85-90 per cent. Fill rate in this case means the rate at which the goods are supplied by a manufacturer against a retailer’s order. To put it simply, if a retailer orders 100 products and the manufacturer supplies 90, then the fill rate is 90 per cent.