Visioning the future of Lok Swasthya Mandali’s (LSM) ayurvedic processing unit and retail shops

Abstract

Lok Swasthya Mandali (LSM) is a healthcare cooperative with 1,825 shareholders and part of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), which is a national union spread over14 states of India with 1.8 million women workers as its member. To address issues such as increasing cost and side effects by allopathic medicine, LSM founded an Ayurvedic medicine plant in 2005. This provides employment and a source of income to SEWA employees, as well as provides these medicines at an affordable price through its lowcost medical shops. These shops are located in areas frequented by SEWA members. These shops also act as patient referral centers who have potentially serious problems. It runs Ayurveda processing unit and 4 retail shops based in Ahmedabad. It produces Ayurvedic FMCG products and medicines. LSM has not been able to grow well in recent years in terms of sales and product diversification and requires some strategic inputs on the initiatives that can be undertaken to put it on a growth path. Prima facie, the main challenges faced by the organization are lack of location, brand awareness, visibility, supply-demand gap, etc. It is possible that there are issues relating to product portfolio, supply chain, and customer linkages and skills.