Moving aggressively into apparel retail, Patanjali Ayurved Ltd. (Textile Division) is working on creating the right team and infrastructure for sourcing apparel.
Recently, the company opened its sourcing office in Noida which is spread out in an area of 6,000 sq. feet and a strong 60-member team has also been hired. More hiring is under process.
KN Singh, who was Executive Director at Creative Group, Mumbai, is the CEO of Patanjali’s sourcing operations. In fact, sources claim that a good number of professionals in the Patanjali sourcing team are from Creative Group, to mention two senior officials – Rahul Dwivedi, GM-Purchase & EA To CEO and Satinder Yadav, VP (Operations).
As the scale of sourcing is quite high, sourcing office has separate teams for different product categories, be it kidswear, womenswear or menswear.
Sources told Apparel Resources that the office of the company is very attractive and well-planned and activities are on to source nearly 11 lakh pieces before the launch, which is expected during the festive season.
Some of the top export houses across India are in touch with the company, however, for a few of them domestic market is quite new. Though one of the senior officials of the company shared that there is no defined target for choosing a vendor, it was pointed out that small and big manufacturers that fits into the company’s business parameters, can get associated to supply merchandise.
How and from where the products will be sold is yet to be disclosed, but sources claim that all options of retail will be explored.
Patanjali Ayurved Ltd. already has an exclusive retail tie-up with Future Group for its products, sold at Big Bazaar outlets. According to media reports, the company aims to hit the ambitious target of Rs. 5,000 crore sales in the first year of operation. It is almost 2 years since Baba Ramdev, Founder of Patanjali Ayurved Ltd., had announced his intention of coming out with Paridhan, an Indian label, in September 2016. Though the project is a little delayed as earlier company’s swadeshi clothing line was expected to come out in April 2018, it is still very much on track and like all other products from the Group, apparel too is expected to shake-up the market.
