Himalaya Drug, Medicine Shoppe May Ink Pact  ( May '18,2004, FE)

In a strategic move, Medicine Shoppe is in the process of finalising an MoU with the Himalaya Drug Company—a leading provider of herbal health and personal care products—soon. The objective behind the move is to set up ‘Himalaya’ information dissemination centres within 51 Medicine Shoppe outlets across the country in 2004.

For the purpose, the Himalaya Drug Company will appoint its own sales representatives with the sample product at the sales point of Medicine Shoppe outlets to provide detailed information on ‘Himalaya’ products, Melrose Trading Co Pvt Ltd COO (India operations) Rajendra Gupta told FE.

At present, Melrose Trading Pvt Ltd is the master franchisee for Medicine Shoppe International, which is present in 12 countries across the globe.

The Himalaya Drug Company president and CEO Ravi Prasad said this is part of company’s new brand-building exercise with plans to make ‘Himalaya’ a household name soon. For the purpose, the company has also recently entered into an MoU with Bharat Petroleum to promote ‘Himalaya’ products through 300 ‘In & Out’ outlets across the country. In addition, Himalaya Drug has started operations with South-based ‘Pill and Powder’ chain of pharma stores and with Delhi-based ‘98.4’ pharma stores as well.

According to Mr Prasad: “The new initiatives will help the company increase its customer base for Himalaya Herbal Health Care products. Hence, it is associating with companies which are expanding their pharma outlets across the country. For example, Medicine Shoppe plans to set up 600 outlets by 2007 and as a result the number of ‘Himalaya’ information dissemination centres will go up. The company is also planning to expand exclusive ‘Himalaya’ retail stores from 50 to 75 and more than double ‘Himalaya’ shop-in-shops by March 2005 from the existing 125.”

Medicine Shoppe is also planning to set up its authorised centralised distribution centre in Goa in the next two months. The objective behind the move is to cater to nine ‘Medicine Shoppe’ outlets. With the move, Medicine Shoppe hopes to garner sales worth Rs 1 crore on per month basis. Medicine Shoppe set up such centres recently in Ahmedabad and a few years ago in Maharashtra.

As part of its consumer promotion, Medicine Shoppe has tied up with Royal Sundaram to provide medical insurance to Medicine Shoppe customers free of cost. As part of the strategy, on purchase of medicines worth Rs 12,000, Rs 15,000 worth of medical insurance will be provided to customers free of cost. “We have already started the new pilot project in Mumbai recently and have plans to nationally launch this consumer promotion soon,” he added.

When contacted Market Search India Pvt Ltd CEO Sudar Rajan said: “The Himalaya Drug Company seems to be doing an offbeat kind of a marketing activity to enhance its brand image. This should definitely spur more volumes of Himalaya herbal health and personal care products.”