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    Ram Bharat: Meet Baba Ramdev's low-profile younger brother who handles Patanjali's day-to-day operations

    Synopsis

    Bharat has worked his way up the organisation & today teams of several functions including finance, human resource, production and supply chain report to him.

    ET Bureau
    MUMBAI: Ram Bharat, the lowprofile younger brother of Baba Ramdev, has taken up the mantle to lead Patanjali Ayurved, acting as an informal chief executive officer of the Haridwar-based consumer products firm, three people in the know told ET.

    While Ramdev is the face of the company and Acharya Balkrishna, managing director at Patanjali Ayurved, has a larger role in product development and innovation, Bharat, 38, is taking care of the day-to-day operations, they said.

    Bharat has worked his way up the organisation and today teams of several functions including finance, human resource, production and supply chain report to him. He reports to Balkrishna and Ramdev.

    “Bharat handles the daily operations and manages most of the running around, and is actually the backend of the company while Baba and Acharya strategise on the company’s growth vision,” said Edelweiss Securities associate director Abneesh Roy who visited the headquarters of Patanjali nearly four months ago.

    Amodest but pleasant Bharat wouldn’t call himself boss though. “It’s a team work and I am a mere sevak,” said Bharat, dressed in kurtapajama and sporting short stubbles.

    Sorry, no photograph — Bharatbhai, as he is known popularly, apparently does not allow himself to be photographed and likes to stay away from limelight.Balkrishna confirmed that Bharat is in charge of multiple functions, but added that he is a board representative and not CEO. “We have various professionals in the organisation and it is a team effort and we will consider the right candidate for the role at the right time,” the MD said.

    Bharat first came to limelight in May last year when he was sent to judicial custody on charges of instigating a clash between Haridwar truck union members and guards of Ramdev’s Patanjali Food and Herbal Park in Haridwar when one person was killed and four were injured.

    It doesn’t seem to have affected his professional commitment as Patanjali, which also has businesses and foundations related to education and research, has emerged perhaps the fastest growing FMCG maker in the country. In recent months, it has hired hundreds of professionals from rival firms.

    “The top management team will have to focus on making room at the top for the professionals joining them. But it is clear that unofficially Ramdev is the chairman, Balkrishna the MD and Ram Bharat the CEO although, it is not seen in good taste to talk of rank and designations within Patanjali,” said a company insider.

    For a company that started as a small pharmacy in 1997, Patanjali has expanded its reach from 200 outlets in 2014 to 10,000 franchise stores at present and launched more than two dozen mainstream FMCG products. No other herbal products maker has forayed into categories such as noodles, oats and detergents. Most of Patanjali’s products are 15%-20% cheaper than leading brands, forcing many of its peers to launch offers and promotions to counter its rising popularity.

    “We believe the competitive pressure from Patanjali in select categories like toothpaste, honey, hair oil, chyawanprash, biscuits and shampoos could continue to disrupt the competitive sector balance in FY17,” wrote Prasad Deshmukh of Bank of America Merrill Lynch in a recent note.

    “While in our view Colgate faces material downside risk from this disruption, we think Dabur, Nestle and Hindustan Unilever could also be impacted in certain areas,” he wrote in the note prepared after meeting Balkrishna.

    Insiders say Bharat played a crucial role in helping Patanjali more than double its revenues year on year to Rs 5,000 crore in 2015-16.

    “He is an extremely accessible person and spends an entire day with quality checks across systems. Ramdev and Balkrishna are also busy working on an ambitious ecommerce project for the brand,” said one of the company officials.


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