Himalaya drugs plans scaling up e-com biz, targets Rs 100 crore by 2018

Mumbai : Herbal health and personal care firm Himalaya Drug Company plans to further scale up its online business and targets a revenue of Rs 100 crore by 2018, a company official said.

"We started selling our products on the e-commerce portals including Amazon, Snapdeal and Flipkart last year and sales through this channel saw a 123 per cent jump," Ganesh Ramaswamy, Senior Manager, Digital Wing at Himalaya, told PTI.

"Our online sales are growing at 70 per cent per year, and we expect it to touch Rs 100 crore by 2018," he added.

At present, online sales is only 1 per cent of the company's revenues.

The Rs 2,000-crore company launched sales through its online portal himalayahealthcare.com in 2008, which it subsequently rebranded to himalayastore.com.

It is now planning to launch a mobile platform and also integrating its offline and online retail across the country by the end of the year, Ramaswamy said.

"Online traffic is over 65 per cent from mobile devices, and we are in the the process of unveiling a mobile application as well. It is currently under pilot in Bengaluru and we will integrate our online business with all our 170 offline retail outlets by year end," he said.

He explained that through the omni-channel integration, the company will be able to service orders from the nearest stores to the customers.

He also expects that people can order products in the retail outlets and have them delivered.

"We are seeing a good number of orders from tier III cities and more rural areas, where distribution may be a channel. That way, online business can help us service these areas better," he said.

The products that are seeing maximum traction include Neem Facewash, anti hairfall shampoo and hair creams, he said.

The company is presently upgrading its digital business using the overall marketing budget and is relying on its own sales and distribution force to promote its omni-channel retail, he said.

Himalaya had earlier said it is in the process of bulking up its sales and distribution across verticals and aims to increase sales force to about 7,000 from 2,000 during this fiscal.