Ramdev’s Patanjali Foods has lost its mojo

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Editor's note: Baba Ramdev-backed Patanjali Foods, the packaged food business of Patanjali Ayurved that was earlier known as Ruchi Soya, seems to be losing its sheen.  It was almost a year ago that Patanjali Ayurved merged its food business—comprising 21 products, including ghee, honey, spices, juices and flour—with Ruchi Soya, an edible oil company that it had acquired through the insolvency process in 2019. Last year, the yoga tycoon also set an ambitious target: To make Patanjali “India’s largest food and FMCG company in the next five years”. A year before that, he had claimed that Patanjali was only next to Hindustan Unilever, India’s largest consumer goods company, and would be No. 1 by 2025.  But Patanjali’s food business seems to have slacked off after the rebranding exercise. Its revenue from operations fell 6.5% for the quarter ended December 2022 from the previous quarter. In contrast, Hindustan Unilever reported a 4% rise. Besides, Patanjali Foods’s EBITDA was merely a tenth of HUL’s in the third quarter of 2022-23. Its operating margin stood at 4.6% in the same period, while that of consumer …