While his friends and those around him are busy discussing whether uttering the word — ‘Om’ — during Yoga is right or not, a businessman in Md Imran Ansari is busy smelling a business opportunity out of it. He has gotten a number of queries in last couple of days regarding availability of Yoga mats at his sports shop situated near BIT (MESRA), Ranchi. And with every ‘no’ against such a query, his happiness increases.
The fact is that Imran is not alone who has been approached by customers for Yoga mats and other Yoga gears before the Yoga Day on Tuesday. Brother duo Sonal Singh and Monal Singh running separate sports goods stores on Main Road, Shashibhushan Agrawal running a sports goods store at Booti Road and a number of others in similar business are also quite encouraged with the pleasant surprise of increasing demands of Yoga goods in the city.
“Prior to the World Yoga Day last year, there was almost no demand of Yoga mats in the city and we were more than happy if our store was able to sell a dozen of such mats. But after Yoga Day last year, the demand increased manifold and we were able to sell more than 150 Yoga mats to individuals alone. This year also we are out of stock in terms of Yoga mats right before Yoga Day,” said Sonal Singh.
Why Ranchi alone, smaller cities like Dhanbad, Jamshedpur and Bokaro are also witnessing these new age internet savvy customers who want to be and look perfect according to the occasion. This is why Biharilal Choudhary, running apparel stores at two locations in Dhanbad was compelled to start selling Yoga mats in his stores from last year.
“Volume is not so high, but it is good to see that a new segment has started taking shape,” Choudhary said. He said that one or two demands of Yoga dresses (he himself didn’t know what it exactly was) had also been seen this year.
According to those in the business of sports goods, there are 10-12 such stores in Ranchi, and all are getting queries for Yoga mats. Many of them started selling this since last year itself.
“You can say that selling 125-150 mats in a year is nothing in terms of volume or value. But when we compare it with demand and sale figure from last year, equation turns crystal clear,” said Monal Singh. He added that the market size of Yoga mats in the city was of merely Rs5-6 lakhs including institutional buyers and others before Yoga Day last year, which has now swelled up to anywhere between Rs30-35 lakh a year.
“The segment we are talking about was largely fragmented and dominated by institutional buyers like schools, Yoga training centres and gymnasiums. But after Yoga Day last year, demands from individuals became evident,” said Agrawal. But he appeared more worried with the presence of ‘made in China’ mats in market even before it stood up. “Every other shopkeeper has started selling China mats which are more than 60 per cent cheaper compared to India made mats,” he said.
Gymnasiums have also turned driving force for this segment, as a number of them have added Yoga in their sessions since last year. It has helped grow institutional sale of the mats in the city and state as a whole.