The brand recently announced its partnership with eKart Logistics, the subsidiary of Flipkart, in delivering supplement products directly to consumers across India within 48 hours.
Speaking to NutraIngredients-Asia, global business head Mathew K. Samuel, said that the brand has seen fast growth in its online business and hoped to further develop its presence in this space before focusing more on offline retail.
Between 2021 and last year, he said that the brand grew over 400 per cent growth from online sales, albeit from a small base.
So far, about 72 per cent of its business comes from online, with the remaining 28 per cent from offline.
Out of the 11 products that it currently sells, the three bestselling products are Curcumin for immunity and overall health, Ashwagandha for stress relief and mental wellbeing, and Gymne-Mag D for regulating blood sugar levels.
“When we spoke a year ago, the brand was just starting to pick up. The potential of growth is phenomenal.
“The main reason of growth is that most people in India use smartphones and have access to online payment gateways,” Samuel said.
The brand currently sells its products directly on its website as well as through third part e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart, and 1mg.
Samuel said that his strategy for the brand was providing immediate delivery upon consumers’ online purchase and the was enabled by the rise of logistics firms providing efficient delivery service.
On the partnership with eKart, he said the priority was to deliver the products to consumers in 48 hours.
On top of eKart, the firm is working with about seven other logistics partners which offer delivery service in different parts of India.
The brand is also present in offline retail, but Samuel said that the focus would be more on online at the moment.
The main reason is because of the difficulty in penetrating offline pharmacies which are mostly dispensing medicines, with supplements enjoying a much smaller presence.
“If you look at a country like India, for example, the pharmacy chains are not like your international pharmacy chains. There aren’t a lot of supplements and the stores are not very big. A lot of consumers are there for OTC or prescription medicines.
“The level of supplements that are available in the market is that there only two key players that are very prevalent in the offline retail space, which is Himalaya and Organic India.
“We want to establish very strong presence in the online space and slowly get into retail.”
The goal he said, was for NatXtra to become one of the top 10 brands in India’s online retail in the next one to 1.5 years before beefing up its offline presence.
The brand recently launched new products ProPlus for prostate health and i-Right+ for eye health.
