 "Tycoon in saffron")
Ayurvedic FMCG company Patanjali, co-founded by Baba Ramdev and Acharya Balkrishna, is expected to act quickly against the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) for what it says are "unlawful actions" by the body. Patanjali's legal recourse will rest on a Bombay High Court matter of 2015 where the jurisdiction of the self-regulatory body was challenged by a company called Teleshop. Patanjali's legal team is expected to use this verdict to present its case of the body lacking the legal backstop to pull up advertisers.
"We are talking to our legal team and will move court soon against ASCI," Patanjali Ayurved's spokesperson SK Tijarawala said when contacted.
While the Cable and Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 has incorporated ASCI's advertising code into it, saying that any advertiser not in compliance of the guidelines will be penalised, companies have approached the courts from time to time challenging the body's decisions. They argue that ASCI's code remains largely self-regulatory in nature.
ASCI typically writes to errant advertisers when complaints against its ads are received. The advertiser is asked to modify the ads by ASCI as quickly as possible. Sources in the know say this method is intended to help advertisers from going through the pain of being dragged to court by the aggrieved company. Intra-industry complaints, for the record, constitute a bulk of ASCI's complaints. ASCI sources say that large advertisers comply with its decisions.
Patanjali clearly seems to have a different point of view on the matter. What appears to have raised hackles of the Haridwar-based firm is ASCI's repeated notices to it over misleading claims made by the latter in its ads. In the last few months, ASCI's Consumer Complaints Council (CCC), which is its core group formed for grievance redressal, has upheld a number of complaints against Patanjali across categories from foods to beverages, hair care, personal care and allied products.
The most prominent of these was a matter recently involving Patanjali's edible oil, where rival branded oil makers through industry body - the Solvent Extractors Association of India - accused the company of disparaging its products. The matter was reported to not only ASCI, but the Food Safety & Standards Association of India (FSSAI) forcing Patanjali to take the ad off air. In recent weeks, the ad has staged a comeback on television.
Experts say that Patanjali will continue to be aggressive as it looks to double turnover to Rs 10,000 crore this fiscal from Rs 5,000 crore last year. Advertising and marketing is a preferred tool of the ayurvedic company, which has leveraged Baba Ramdev's equity as a yoga guru well in the last few years.
