Mint has a piece on Baba Ramdev-led FMCG company Patanjali going online to further its sales.
Some may have seen the irony in Patanjali Ayurved Ltd tying up with foreign-owned/funded e-commerce companies, even as it swears to end the reign of foreign-owned consumer brands in the market.
Patanjali is only being pragmatic in doing what’s good for its own business, of being available where the consumers are. Its decision is one more pointer to the growing importance of e-commerce as a distribution channel for packaged consumer goods.
I have an entire chapter in my book dedicated to this – about the internet has revolutionised distribution and retail. In that I talk about Dollar Shave Club, pickle sellers from Sringeri and mobile manufacturers such as Xiaomi who have pioneered the “flash sale” concept. In another part of the book, I’ve written about how Amazon has revolutionised bookselling, first by selling online and then by pioneering e-books.
Whenever a new consumer goods company wants to set up shop, one of the hardest tasks is in establishing a distribution network. Conventional distribution networks are typically several layers deep, and in order to get to the customer, each layer of the distribution network needs to be adequately compensated.
Apart from the monetary cost, there is also the transaction cost of convincing each layer that it is worthwhile carrying the new seller’s goods. The other factor to be considered is that distributors at various levels are in a sense loyal to incumbent sellers (since they are responsible for a large portion of the current business), making it harder for new seller to break through.
The advantage with online retailers is that they compress the supply chain, with one entity replacing a whole network of distributors. This may not necessarily be cost-effective from the money perspective, since the online retailers will seek to capture all the value that all the layers of the current distribution chain are capturing. However, in terms of transaction costs it is significantly easier since there is only one layer to get past, and online retailers seldom have loyalty or exclusive relationships.
In fact, the size and bargaining power of online retailers (vis-a-vis offline distributors) means that if there is an exclusive relationship, it is the retailer who holds the exclusive rights and not the seller.
In Patanjali’s case, they have already established a wide offline network with exclusive stores and partnerships, but my sense is that they seem to be hitting the limits of distribution. Thanks to Baba Ramdev’s popularity as a yoga guru, Patanjali enjoys strong brand recall, and it appears as if their distribution is unable to keep pace with their brand.
From this perspective, going online (through Amazon/Flipkart) is a rational strategy for them since with one deal they get significantly higher distribution power. Moreover, being a new brand, they don’t have legacy distributors who might get pissed off if they go online (this is a problem that the Unilevers of the world face).
So it is indeed a pragmatic decision by Patanjali to take the online route. And after all, in the end, sheer commerce can trump nationalist tendencies and xenophobia.
