How has your journey been in India in the last 15 years? (store presence/ market size etc)

We are a 22 year old group with interests in biotechnology, education, retail, tourism, finance and e-business. We have been operating in the Indian market through partners and authorized dealers over the past 15 years. Our current footprint includes 12 operations branches across 9 cities ((Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Guwahati, Odisha, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Agartala, Chennai, Bangalore and Cochin) and 75 authorized dealer stores. Every year we are growing in double digits in India. Along with our partners, we currently operate three manufacturing plants located in Haridwar, Chennai and Himachal Pradesh.

Please share what are your growth plans and expectations from this market.

India as a market is of great strategic importance to us. India is extremely rich on natural herbal resources and we are appreciative of the same. We wish to take the richness of Indian herbs to newer geographies and help global citizens consume them and derive benefits. We have a rich network of over 80,000 distributors and 75 dealer stores in India. We plan to increase our dealer network to over 150 stores in the course of the next three years.

With Indian government policies and activities like Make In India, implementation of GST – how does all this impact your business? And how are you addressing these?

We feel that with recent developments in Indian policy and economic environment, the market is opening up and becoming friendlier for foreign investment and operations. We will comply with the law of the land as we grow our business operations in the country.

What are your manufacturing plans for the India market?

We have plans to make India a manufacturing hub for the APAC region, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. We will manufacture healthcare, wellness and nutrition products here which we plan to promote in global markets as well.  Considering the cost efficiencies of sourcing raw materials from India and an increasingly open economic environment, we believe India has great potential to be a manufacturing hub for our APAC operations. We have recently invested 20 million USD in setting up manufacturing facilities in Vietnam and are looking at a similar commitment for India over the next three years.

Do you plan on entering the e-commerce space? What are your plans for the India market?

We have already launched our global website for e-commerce. We believe there is great potential to promote the high quality products manufactured in the Indian market. And hence are planning to launch our e-commerce platform – Maya E-commerce- by January 2018 in India.

What are your plans for CSR in India?

Public welfare has always been close Chairman Li’s heart. Education in particular, is a deep focus area for us and we would be keen to explore areas where we can contribute to public welfare in India.