Hamdard's Heritage-Based Brand Strategy in Consumer Healthcare

Industry & Competitive Context

India's consumer healthcare and OTC (over-the-counter) wellness market sits at the intersection of traditional medicine systems (Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha) and modern FMCG-style branding, distribution, and digital marketing. This category has, over the past two decades, become intensely competitive as large diversified players — Dabur, Himalaya, Patanjali, and multinational OTC brands — have built scaled distribution, aggressive advertising spends, and science-forward positioning around "natural" and "immunity" health claims.

Hamdard Laboratories (India) operates in this space through its Medicine Division (Unani pharmaceuticals and OTC wellness products) and its Food Division (led by Rooh Afza). Hamdard Laboratories is an Indian Unani pharmaceutical and food company established in 1906 by Hakeem Hafiz Abdul Majeed in Delhi, known for products such as Safi, Roghan Badam Shirin, Sualin, Joshina, and Cinkara. The Medicine Division today is managed by Hakeem Abdul Hameed's oldest grandson and is positioned as one of India's leading health and wellness companies, with a portfolio exceeding 600 natural and herb-based products. Hamdard

A structurally distinctive feature shapes Hamdard's competitive posture: unlike its listed or promoter-owned rivals, Hamdard Laboratories (India) is a non-profit organization associated with the Hamdard National Foundation, a charitable educational trust. This waqf (charitable trust) structure removes shareholder-return pressure from brand decisions, allowing longer investment horizons in heritage equity, but it also means Hamdard competes against well-funded, growth-metric-driven rivals without comparable capital markets access.

Brand Situation Prior to Renewed Strategic Push

Hamdard's flagship heritage products — Rooh Afza (1907), Safi, and Roghan Badam Shirin — each carry multi-decade consumer recall, but each faced a similar strategic problem: deep familiarity without active engagement.

For Rooh Afza, Hamdard was started in 1906 as a small Unani clinic in Delhi by Hakeem Abdul Majeed, and the company launched Rooh Afza, a scarlet-hued sherbet, in 1907, which quickly gained popularity for its nutritional and medicinal properties. In the 1980s, Rooh Afza faced competition from local powder drinks and ready-to-drink brands and had to reposition itself; after economic liberalization in the early 1990s, multinational beverage brands such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Red Bull built wide distribution and large promotional budgets, and Rooh Afza's sales declined from the late 1990s into the early 2000s. By 2019, the Rooh Afza brand was reported at roughly Rs 400 crore in size, having begun as a medicinal drink to counter dry North Indian heat. Business Standard

For Safi, the challenge was different: a genuinely potent legacy asset with weak modern visibility. Safi, a Unani formulation positioned as a herbal blood purifier associated with skin concerns, had circulated in Indian households for years with limited marketing push, its use historically dependent on practitioner advice, retail familiarity, and word of mouth rather than active consumer discovery. Industry commentary published in 2026 framed this as a "legacy problem" — brand familiarity in healthcare can simply reflect longevity rather than active engagement, and Safi sits somewhere between the two.

This is the strategic tension at the heart of the case: Hamdard's brands possess unusually strong inherited trust, but that trust was built on radio, print, and word-of-mouth channels of an earlier era, requiring active reinvestment to remain relevant to digitally native, choice-rich consumers.

Strategic Objective

Across its Medicine Division communications, Hamdard's stated objective has been consistent: retain the "authenticity" and "purity" equity of heritage formulations while expanding relevance among younger, urban, and digitally engaged consumers, without diluting product truth-claims.

This is evident in company statements on distribution and communication strategy. The company has described its approach as continuing to invest in direct distribution and rural activation alongside urban markets, while building communication strategies that engage potential consumers where they are, in line with changing times. Reported advertising intensity supports this: Hamdard has described itself as an early adopter of advertising and a large spender in language media and print, with a healthy double-digit advertising-to-sales ratio, and increasing allocation to digital. Business Standard

On the medicines side, the objective has an explicit growth target. In 2016, Hamdard set a sales target of Rs 1,000 crore, based on growth from existing products including heritage brands like Rooh Afza and new launches. More recently, the company has been reported to be targeting ₹1,000 crore in medicines revenue over five years through diversification into lifestyle disorder management and wellness infrastructure.

Campaign Architecture & Execution

Hamdard's brand-building activity is best understood as a portfolio of parallel, product-specific campaigns rather than one master brand campaign, each anchored to a specific heritage asset's core claim.

Safi — "Sachai Andar, Achchai Bahar" (Truth Inside, Goodness Outside): This campaign reframed Safi's decades-old blood-purifier positioning around inner authenticity translating to outer beauty. The campaign was described as embodying the age-old belief of nurturing beauty from within, featuring Safi as a blend of herbal extracts — including neem, chiraita, senna, and tulsi — that keeps skin clear while supporting digestion and circulation. The campaign's second phase used real, non-celebrity achievers as protagonists. The film featured personalities such as a TEDx speaker who had worked as a beedi roller, the maker of India's first 3D printer, and India's first stunt woman, using PSOM radio and digital media for reach. Importantly, the brand's CMO was explicit that this was medicinal, not cosmetic, positioning: Safi is not a beauty product but a medicine, an OTC product sold without a doctor's prescription, unlike prescription drugs. The brand had earlier expanded its target audience in 2013 to include the male segment of the population. Afaqs!

Roghan Badam Shirin (sweet almond oil) — "Shine Like No One" and confidence-led campaigns (2021–2022): In December 2021, Hamdard released the "Shine Like No One" campaign, creatively highlighting the ingredient story of its 100% Unani, 100% sweet almond oil through a 360-degree media approach aimed at establishing category market leadership. The campaign ran across 60-, 40-, and 30-second edits on social media, OTT, and television. A year later, the brand shifted register toward women's empowerment. The 2022 campaign, conceptualized by Dentsu, highlighted the goodness of sweet almond oil bringing out confidence in women, depicting young, bold women unafraid to make life and career choices. The messaging was designed to move beyond physical beauty toward a broader sense of self-confidence and well-being. A companion film targeted a different use-occasion entirely: a planned film highlighting the product's role in supporting memory power was aimed at attracting mothers of young children. Chairman Abdul Majeed situated this within a broader brand purpose narrative, noting the product's availability had also expanded to e-commerce channels alongside traditional retail (per BW Marketing World, December 2022). e4m

Rooh Afza — continuous cultural repositioning across a century: Rooh Afza's strategy has been one of the longest-running exercises in heritage-brand renewal in Indian marketing. Following Partition in 1947, which split Hamdard Laboratories between India and Pakistan, Rooh Afza retained its identity as a symbol of tradition and nostalgia in both countries, with cultural positioning tied to festivals and family gatherings, and later expansion into Middle Eastern markets serving diaspora demand. The brand's mass-media era slogan, "Ghar-Ghar Mein Rooh Afza" (Rooh Afza in every home), emphasized its role as a household staple alongside health-centric messaging around its use with milk, water, and desserts. In the pre-broadcast era, distribution reach was strikingly analog: in the 1940s and 1950s, when direct communication lines were difficult, Hamdard advertised Rooh Afza in remote locations by dropping pamphlets from helicopters. Storyboard18

More recently, the brand has layered occasion-based and religious-calendar marketing atop its core positioning. Ramadan-linked campaigns made Rooh Afza synonymous with Iftar, the evening meal breaking the day's fast. The brand also engaged recipe-based influencer marketing: event and cookbook personality Nita Mehta and actress Juhi Chawla were engaged by Hamdard to create new mocktail and dessert recipes for Rooh Afza as part of a marketing campaign. Seasonal and format innovation followed: Rooh Afza milkshake and lassi variants were made available during monsoon and in October–November, and in 2020 the brand introduced Rs 10 sachets, which gained significant traction in Uttar Pradesh. Hamdard also tested category extension into modern beverages: the parent company launched a ready-to-drink carbonated version called Red Rush aimed at the youth market, with the brand seeking feedback to refine its relevance to that audience.

Positioning & Consumer Insight

Across brands, three consistent positioning threads emerge from public statements and campaign material:

Purity and naturalness as the core promise. Rather than competing on efficacy claims against modern pharmaceuticals, Hamdard's OTC brands consistently foreground ingredient transparency and "100% natural/Unani" framing — visible in Roghan Badam Shirin's repeated emphasis on being 100% pure sweet almond oil, and in Safi's ingredient-led storytelling around neem, chiraita, and tulsi.

Reframing medicinal function as a lifestyle and identity benefit. Safi's shift from a blemish-treatment framing to an "inner beauty, outer confidence" narrative, and Roghan Badam Shirin's shift from a grooming oil to a symbol of women's self-belief and career confidence, both illustrate a consistent playbook: retaining the functional medicinal claim (blood purification, nourishment) while wrapping it in an aspirational, socially resonant narrative aimed at contemporary audiences rather than only traditional users.

Occasion and ritual embedding for the flagship food brand. Rooh Afza's strategy has relied less on reformulation and more on continuously re-anchoring the product to household rituals — festivals, Ramadan, summer heat relief, children's memory and family bonding — ensuring the brand is invoked by cultural occasion rather than solely by category need.

Media & Channel Strategy

Publicly disclosed information indicates a deliberate multi-channel approach that has evolved with media consumption patterns rather than a fixed single-channel strategy. Television, print, radio, and outdoor remain Hamdard's main current mediums, evolved from the pamphlet-drop era of the 1940s–50s. The company has confirmed a double-digit advertising-to-sales ratio with growing digital allocation, and campaigns such as "Shine Like No One" were explicitly run across social media, OTT, and television in multiple edit lengths. Rooh Afza: The ruby coloured drink’s brand popularity, evolution and future challenges - Storyboard18 +2

Digital and e-commerce channel expansion is also documented for Rooh Afza, which built a presence on YouTube and Instagram recipe content, alongside listings on Amazon and Flipkart, and a branded social hashtag campaign (#RefreshWithRoohAfza) inviting user-generated content.

Business & Brand Outcomes

Publicly available outcome data is limited and should not be over-interpreted:

• Rooh Afza was reported by Business Standard (2019) as a Rs 400-crore brand. Business Standard

• Hamdard set an internal target of Rs 1,000 crore in sales in 2016. Outlook Business

• A five-year target of ₹1,000 crore in medicines revenue, via diversification into lifestyle disorder management and wellness infrastructure, has been reported as of early 2026.

• Company-published history states Hamdard Labs' turnover doubled in three years to INR 300 crore at one stage, later reaching INR 500 crore with record profitability since inception, and its Manesar facility received US FDA certification.

• Hamdard has acquired nearly 200 acres for captive medicinal herb cultivation, moving away from outsourced sourcing to gain tighter control over quality and supply. Open Magazine

Strategic Implications

Hamdard's case illustrates a distinct model of heritage-brand management appropriate for firms that combine genuine multi-generational trust with categories where science-based skepticism (from allopathic-oriented urban consumers) coexists with continued traditional-medicine demand. Three implications stand out for practitioners and researchers:

First, the case demonstrates that heritage equity is a depreciating asset absent active reinvestment. Both the Rooh Afza sales decline of the late 1990s/early 2000s and the more recent characterization of Safi as under-leveraged despite strong underlying trust show that legacy recall alone does not sustain modern relevance; continuous, occasion- and audience-specific reinvestment is required.

Second, Hamdard's approach of "reframing rather than reformulating" — retaining the core Unani/medicinal claim while updating the narrative wrapper (confidence, self-love, career ambition, cultural ritual) — offers a template for legacy healthcare brands seeking youth relevance without abandoning the credibility base that differentiates them from newer entrants.

Third, the waqf/non-profit ownership structure is a double-edged strategic asset: it enables patient, multi-decade brand investment insulated from quarterly earnings pressure, but the same structure limits access to the growth capital that scaled, professionally funded competitors can deploy for distribution and advertising intensity, making brand storytelling (rather than spend-matching) the more viable competitive lever.

Discussion Questions

1. To what extent can a heritage brand rely on "reframing" (changing narrative context) versus "reformulating" (changing the product) to sustain relevance across generational consumer shifts? Where does Hamdard's Safi and Roghan Badam Shirin strategy sit on this spectrum, and what are the risks of over-relying on narrative reframing alone?

   
   

2. Hamdard's waqf (non-profit charitable trust) ownership structure removes shareholder pressure but also limits capital access. How should this ownership model shape brand investment decisions differently from a listed competitor such as Dabur or Himalaya?

   
   

3. Evaluate Hamdard's decision to expand Safi's target audience to include men in 2013 and to layer women's-empowerment messaging onto Roghan Badam Shirin in 2022. What segmentation and positioning risks arise when a heritage medicinal brand broadens its audience definition without altering the underlying product claim?

   
   

4. Rooh Afza has continuously anchored itself to cultural occasions (Ramadan, festivals, summer heat) rather than competing primarily on product innovation. Assess the sustainability of an occasion-based brand strategy in an FMCG beverage category increasingly shaped by global multinational competitors with year-round innovation pipelines.

   
   

5. Given the limited availability of audited financial disclosure and campaign-level performance metrics for Hamdard (as a non-profit entity), what alternative frameworks should a marketing analyst use to assess brand health and strategic effectiveness in the absence of standard public-company KPIs?