Sri Sri beats Baba Ramdev, launches apparel brand ahead of Patanjali

Spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravishankar’s consumer goods venture Sri Sri Tattva has launched an in house apparel brand – BYOGI. The initiative comes at a time when the market is abuzz with a possible entry of Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali into the apparel space – a project it announced three years ago.

Banking on the hype related to yoga, BYOGI will have ranges of ethnic wears, yoga wears and yoga accessories like mats. To begin with, Sri Sri Tattva has opened a company-owned branded in Bangaluru. It aims to open some 80 stores by end of March, 2019 across metros and tier-I cities to market it’s the products, said Tej Katpitia, chief executive officer of Sri Sri Tattva. “The first 25 stores could be company-owned, for the rest we have to look beyond. We are also in talks with large format retail chains”. Apart from BYOGI apparels the stores will also market complimentary personal care products from Sri Sri Tattva’s portfolio. 

To procure apparels at a larger scale, the firm has tied-up with manufacturers from Gujarat and Rajasthan. “Also, a pilot project is underway in Karnataka, where we have roped in rural women, who make machine made garments and sell them to us”, he said. Currently, the group sells a small range of apparels under the Sri Sri brand.

Patanjali Ayurved, co-founded by another guru Baba Ramdev, has been trying to come up with apparel brand for quite some time. While Baba Ramdev had declared its entry into the garments space in 2015, the initiative is yet to be materialized. Recently, the yoga guru said that Patanjali’s entry could well be in 2019. However, while Patanjali aims to market its apparels in line with ‘swadeshi’ (indigenous) mantra, Sri Sri Tattva is betting on widening popularity of yoga, for now.