Kishore Biyani sets sights on Iraya to speed up Future Groups’s growth

NEW DELHI: Kishore Biyani’s Future Group is closing in on an ayurvedic company and is in advanced stages of talks to acquire Iraya, that sells a host of personal care products, from Athena Life Sciences, two persons familiar with the development said. This would mark Biyani’s entry into a sector that has seen great demand lately.
Founded in 2014 by three former executives of Paras Pharmaceuticals, bought by UK’s Reckitt Benckiser in 2011, the Ahmedabad-based cosmeceutical and therapeutic beauty treatment company, Athena Life Sciences, sells brands like Hair for Sure, a hair regrowth treatment, and antidandruff lotion D’Free. Iraya has a bouquet of hair and personal care products in the ayurvedic, botanical and spa space.

Iraya would be Biyani’s entry vehicle into the torrid ayurvedic space that has been made popular over the years by the emergence of Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved that sells ayurvedic products worth more than Rs 10,000 crore annually. This prompted global and local rivals like Hindustan Unilever, P&G, Colgate Palmolive and Dabur, among others to either introduce or ramp up their own ayurvedic products portfolio.

Future Group and Athena did not respond to emails seeking comment for this story.

The natural segment of India’s personal care market is estimated to be worth `18,500 crore, or almost 41% of the total personal care market, consumer research firm Nielsen found.


Biyani has ambitious plans for ayurvedic products and Future group plans to enter almost every FMCG category in the segment, one of the sources said. These products would be under the group’s FMCG arm — Future Consumer.

ET had reported in March that Future Group is preparing to launch its own ayurvedic hair oil and other beauty products targeting the mass market.

“We are in talks for acquisitions in the ayurvedic beauty space. Valuations might be a little high now, but we are exploring opportunities,” Biyani had told ET, adding that his company is inspired by the rapid growth of Patanjali and wants to become as big as the herbal products major in the FMCG space Biyani, a pioneer of modern retailing in India, runs 1,700 outlets nationwide across formats ranging from grocery, department chains, hypermarkets to malls.

The country’s largest retailer, Future Group, has an ambitious target of opening as many as 10,000 small stores in the years to come.

The group aims to clock revenue of Rs 60,000 crore from smaller format stores, up from about Rs 5,000 crore at present.