In 1906, Hakim Abdul Majeed, who was a physician of Unani herbal medicine started a clinic named ‘Hamdard’ in Old Delhi. A year later he launched a drink that is now popular with the name of Rooh Afza. The aim of selling this drink was to preserve and promote the Unani medicine and to teach the principles of health and hygiene in a selfless manner. Abdul died at the age of 40 and had 2 sons who knew the complete recipe for making Rooh Afza.

After the partition of India in 1947, the elder son of Abdul stayed in India while the younger one named Mohammed Said decided to migrate to Pakistan and he started a separate Hamdard in Karachi. The expansion of Hamdard started with this as the Unani medicines were very effective in solving health issues.

The popularity of Rooh Afza can be guessed from the fact that many countries have tried to make a drink with similar taste but no one has developed the authentic taste like that of Rooh Afza.

Marketing strategies used by Rooh Afza

1. Packaging

Packaging has helped Rooh Afza to maintain its popularity among customers. Like the authentic taste of this drink, the colour of packaging hasn’t changed also, which is a good tactic keeping in mind that brands try too many things with packaging and end up losing their identity among buyers. It is available in different sizes from sachets to 1000ml bottles.

2. Keeping it natural

Indians love natural things and this statement is true for things we consume as food and drinks. Rooh Afza is seen as a natural drink and even in the social media campaigns, Rooh Afza has supported using natural colours on Holi and daily use purposes. Rooh Afza contains fruits, herbs, vegetables, and roots.

3. Medicinal qualities

In a country where anything extra is seen as a big factor for buying something, Rooh-Afza made its place due to its medicinal qualities. Customers trust this drink blindly and see it as an alternative to cold drinks that are considered harmful to health.

4. Pricing

The prices of Rooh Afza bottles have always been reasonable as the company has a mass number of buyers and keeping low margins is a good strategy in this competitive market.

5. Encouraging children and youth

Although, Rooh Afza is popular in all age group the main focus of the company has been to target the kids and teenagers with Television ads, sponsoring school events, in-film promotion and ads on products used by kids including tiffins, water bottles and so on.

The only negative we see in this brand is it is seen as a seasonal drink and people forget about Rooh Afza during cold weather.

We hope this article can help in understand why Rooh Afza achieved success and the marketing strategies used by the company to capture the Indian market.