Demand for the natural products has increased substantially because of Covid-19: Girish Soman, Nisarga Herbs

Some of the major changes are happening because of the support of the Ministry of Ayush by introducing a task force for clinical trials and bringing together the industry for doing more and more clinical research.

 Covid 19 – Impact on The Wellness Industry
The wellness industry could be defined in three sectors: Government policies, Public perception and Wellness industry as a whole. The biggest change that has happened is the demand for the natural products has increased substantially because of Covid-19 as there is no known solution for the same. Covid-19 has majorly impacted the wellness industry, specially on the policy makers as well as public at large and eventually on the industry. The pressure of pandemic has led to a big growth in the demand for ayurvedic products and the ayurvedic companies have to enhance their production by using modern technology and also adopting newer techniques to create cutting edge products as well as start doing validation of the products in a modern way and modern clinical set up.

 Technology and Clinical Trials in Ayurveda
If we look at the technology part and clinical trials, then some of the major changes that are happening because of the support of the Ministry of Ayush by introducing a task force for clinical trials and bringing together the industry for doing more and more clinical research. Unfortunately, not many big players are really putting money into this kind of trials because the returns are not known and we do not know how many years the products would be marketed for this particular pandemic. With this pandemic now, the technology has already geared for making better quality products, the most important part is the investment in clinical trials are proving the efficiency of ayurvedic herbs or substances. The biggest reason is that the people at large have realised that preventive health is going to be more important to ensure their financial stability and that is one of the biggest driving factors in improving the market of Ayurveda. As far as the quality of product is concerned regulators are becoming more and more stringent. 

 Nisarga Biotech – the journey so far
In 1993, we started this group with a vision to provide alternatives to chemicals and chemical fertilizers rampantly used in agriculture and the residues in the food was creating havoc on the health of general public. We realised that until we create trust and give a quality product using natural substances, the farmers cannot think of organic farming as their livelihood was depending on their daily income. I am happy to say that we have grown this idea in leaps and bounds by providing natural alternatives to the farmers. We have provided more than 30 products in the range of organic farming inputs for the farmer to begin with. We realised that we need to provide solutions, it has to be coming from an organic source that is why we started first with organic herbs and later started exporting the extracts to the Western countries since the last 20 years.

We were the first company in India to launch our products in the US which is considered as a quality conscious market for ayurvedic supplements and then decided to launch the same in India. When we started providing quality products to the Western countries, we realised that one of the most unmet needs was the products working on the brain or products in the neurological segment. This was the major category where we did our research and filed our first patent on attention deficit disorder (ADD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

 We believe that these two areas need such products as there is a large unmet need for such products which can deliver required effects and we are focusing on this even today. We are also having other categories of products that are mainly used in geriatric as well as cancer treatments. Overall we are focusing our attention on the chronic diseases where modern medicine has limited options and that is where we believe that modern day customers will prefer cutting age modern ayurvedic products.