Businesses Led by Indian Gurus -- Money and Ego

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he former CEO of Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurveda has shockingly claimed that the company doesn’t want to pay salaries and wants its employees to work with them under the name of ‘service’. The former CEO of Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurveda has shockingly claimed that the company doesn’t want to pay salaries and wants its employees to work with them under the name of ‘service’.

Notably, Patanjali has reportedly reached at a turnover of Rs 10,500 crore. Patra revealed that the company is paying very little salaries to the employees. “Babaji (Baba Ramdev) describes this as calling it a service,” he reportedly said.

“Patanjali pay very little to the people who work for them. Ramdev calls it ‘seva’. For instance, I was doing two jobs there — at Patanjali Ayurved and Patanjali Food Park. They had promised to pay for both. But he would announce to everyone that I have come to do seva. Right now he is drawing salary, but soon, he won’t even take that,” Patra reportedly told this to Mint.

Patra, an Indian Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Management alumnus, used to argue with Baba Ramdev to even get his promised salary. “I used to respond, No, I want my money. I said I don’t need it for myself. I have a family. I need money for my family, to support them and my relatives. Then Baba Ramdev relented and gave me a salary for one of the two jobs that I was performing. But basically, his argument was I have to offer free seva to his host of companies,” he was quoted as saying by the Mint.

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Interestingly, a petition has been put up against Patanjali on Change.org to give support to the company employees.

“I am writing this petition on behalf of my friend & disclose many horrible suffering of him & other colleagues in Patanjali Group. My friend and may be many persons in India was extremely disturbed by private job. They don’t have any policies for salary increment or any schemes of betterment of employees. On one face, he is working in a reputed organization named as Patanjali Bio Research Institute (PBRI) Pvt. Ltd & Patanjali become India’s most attractive FMCG brand of Baba Ramdev in the year 2016 but another face is where employee’s are exploited for salary & didn’t get proper wage as they deserve,” reads the petition.