Patanjali banks on Fifa World Cup coverage to target urban youth

New Delhi: With its sales growth stagnating, yoga guru-turned-businessman Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved Ltd is banking on Fifa World Cup 2018 to lure Indian youth across urban areas that has so far been a weak market for the Haridwar-based company. This time, Patanjali is banking on online video streaming platform SonyLIV, the over-the-top services division of Sony Pictures Networks and the official broadcast partner of Fifa World Cup which targets to achieve 45 million viewership from the ongoing football tournament. Not just SonyLIV, we also have associations with other video streaming sites like Hotstar and Netflix where Patanjali The shift in the advertising strategy of Patanjali, which has been among the top advertisers on television channels in the past 2-3 years, comes soon after the company failed to grow sales during the fiscal year ended 31 March 2018, missing its target to double revenue to ₹ 20,000 crore from ₹ 10,561 crore in the year ended 31 March 2017. Both SonyLIV and Patanjali declined to share details on cost of “A good sports property like Fifa World Cup reaches out to a large variety of audience across age groups, therefore, any brand looking for a deep consumer connect will leverage such a property,” said Uday Sodhi, executive vice president and head, digital business, Sony Pictures Networks India.