Baba Ramdev is soon going to be an integral part of our Border Security Force (BSF) troops’ lives. Over a dozen shops of Patanjali brand, promoted by yoga guru Ramdev, will be opened on BSF campuses across the country over the next year. The first of the shops was opened on a BSF campus on Wednesday, according to the Press Trust of India (PTI).
Baba Ramdev is already involved big-time in training the BSF troops in yoga, which the Narendra Modi government made mandatory part of physical training for the border force last year. More than 2,000 of BSF troops were trained at Ramdev’s Patanjali Institute in Haridwar last year. According to reports in August last year, yoga replaced the 45-minute physical training session after the yoga guru-cum-entrepreneur offered his expertise to the BSF, whose troops man parts of India’s borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Ramdev’s new deal with the BSF will make available Patanjali’s products in BSF stores across the country at discounts ranging from 15 percent to 28 percent. The first store in Delhi was reportedly inaugurated by Renu Sharma, wife of BSF director general KK Sharma.
Several stores are reportedly scheduled to open on BSF campuses in Agartala, Tekanpur (Gwalior), Guwahati, Jodhpur, Siliguri, Jalandhar, Kolkata, Jammu, Bangalore, Silchar, Ahmedabad, Hazaribagh and Indore over the next year.
It was reported that the BSF Wives Welfare Association (BWWA), a group that advocates welfare of families of retired and serving BSF officers, inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Patanjali Ayurved Limited, Haridwar for sale of Patanjali products through stores on BSF campuses across the country.
According to an estimate, the provisional sales of the company for the ten months upto January 2016 added up to just over Rs 3,200 crore. Ramdev’s trusted aide, Balkrishna, reportedly owns 94 percent of stake in Patanjali, but works without a salary.
The report further highlighted that the FMCG company’s business model already relied on selling products at discounted rates to general public, a business strategy to capture a market share.
