Ayurveda Revisited. Bootstrapped.
Global market leader – Ashwagandha
Another chemical engineer at work
Since the IIT Alumni Council launched the global best sellor – Ayurveda Revisted by VishwaGuru Dr Shantaram Kane and Christina W. – the Ayurveda ecosystem has been shaken by the brilliance and simplicity of the super extract process which potentially disrupts the cost of premium ayurvedic medicines by 100x.
But this is not the first or the only attempt at causing a paradigm shift.
Credit for that would go to a young self made entrepreneur KARTIKEYA BALDWA . I finally got to meet him and his family at the MGC at Jodhpur. He wasn’t a startup competing in Trisarg, but on the contrary was the platinum sponsor for the entire MGC. Alongside Aditya Birla enterprises and Anand Rathi.
Kartikeya has no VC and no PE. He has hardly any debt. He is the worlds largest supplier of ashwagandha extract, a trademarked product that he brands as KSM66 Ashwagandha. Starting off in 2010 after a ChE from Hyderabad and a stint at Stanford university, in fifteen years he has built the worlds largest and probably only private label for a traditional Indian herb. He produces a proprietary extract from Ashwagandha which is contract farmed.
And he manufactures 200 tons per month of this extract. In value terms, close to 90% of the global market. Till KSM66 arrived, the world market for ashwagandha extract was less than 20 tpa, now just his company does 2400 tpa.
It is clinically validated, extensively researched, brilliantly marketed and as expected …. Kartikeya owns the market that he created. Every major nutraceutical brand carries his trademark. The best brands in the world carry not ashwagandha but KSM66 Ashwagandha – a proprietary standardised extract made by him. The mfg process is a trade secret.
It generates close to usd 100 million pa in EBITDA. It is a startup almost no one has heard of. Marketing seems to be in his genes. I had lunch with his mother and she could have given a tough fight to India’s top marketing gurus like Santosh Desai , Mrinalini Gupta or Vinita B. She was all praises for her eminently successful son. But that aside, the passion and gusto with which she spoke of her sons company and product – made me drop twenty other meetings lined up for the day – to spend time with him on his journey and learning’s.
He did not burn money building a brand but followed the “intel inside” playbook. Essentially building a b2b2c brand in which he pockets the profits and the customer facing brands burn holes in their pockets pushing the boundaries of b2c. Eventually all his b2c customers are doing is building his brand. Among the ayurvaids who guided him were industry leaders like Deepika Gunawant.
His communication was crystal clear. Nowhere at the MGC was his company name mentioned. Platinum sponsor list mentioned KSM66. Every branding activity is to build the five letter brand.
This is one of the best examples of Startup India.
