Balakrishna might not be the face of Patanjali — that honour is reserved for Yoga-guru Baba Ramdev — but he does own about 98.5% stake in the Ayurvedic giant turned FMCG. Since its inception, it has been taking on big companies like Walmart and Amazon in India.
The 47-year old Balakrishna, who’s worth $1.6 billion according to Forbes, started his journey way back in 1995 when he set up Divya Pharmacy along with his friend and Ramdev — who is known to have strong connections with the right-wing political party in India.
A decade later, Balakrishna launched Patanjali Ayurved — by taking a personal loan of up to ₹60 crore (around $793,020).
Now, Patanjali — which has set its sights on becoming a ₹ 40,000 crore FMCG (around $5 billion) — is involved in almost every business from food to clothing to power to private security, and even cloud services and IT solutions.