Healthy Ageing approach: New Arjuna Natural CEO highlights strategy to expand market share in Asia
Anup Krishnan is the new CEO of the India-headquartered natural extracts company.
He was most recently the managing director of operations at Kraton Polymers India, where he was also the technical director overseeing innovation programs.
Prior to this, Krishnan headed the Performance & Specialty Materials group for Syngene International, Ltd. in Bangalore, focusing on specialty chemicals for healthcare and cosmetics. He previously worked for GE, SABIC & Momentive, and other leading tech companies.
In an interview with NutraIngredients-Asia, Krishnan outlined the strategies and areas of growth that the company has identified.
First, the company, which has a major presence in the US followed by Europe, hopes to increase its market share in Asia.
This is because several countries in the region are witnessing a greying population and health and wellness has become a critical concern.
This means that the company’s innovation pipeline will place more focus on geriatric care.
“If you look at UN data, right now about one billion are over 60 years old and the figure is expected to double by 2050,” he said, adding that most would come from the Asia region.
“Health and wellness is going to be a critical area, so any of those health management like cognitive health, diabetes, or pulmonary health, joint management, pain management, geriatric population needs to be taken care of in those areas.
“If you look at our product line, we already have products in those areas and the short term what we are looking at in this area is our new product which is going to revolutionise pain management…Our focus will be on this ingredient in the short term.”
He is referring to Rhuleave-K – the company’s proprietary formula for acute pain relief launched last year. Consisting of bioactives from turmeric and Boswellia, the formula can be used for acute pain relief related to sports injury.
Aside from acute pain relief, the company is also going to focus on stress and sleep nutraceutical ingredients.
“Then in the medium term we are looking at how we can improve the quality of the quality of sleep and stress relief.”
In this area, the company currently has Shoden – a branded formula containing Withanolide glycosides – the bioactives in ashwagandha for stress relief and sleep support.
Aside from healthy ageing, the company is also going to focus on developing new formulas for use in nutricosmetics, cosmetics, and pet care further down the road.
Elsewhere in the US and Europe, the company is popular with its BCM-95 (Curcugreen). It is manufactured by combining curcumin with turmeric essential oil specially enriched to 45 per cent Ar-turmerone.
So far, it has been backed by studies on its benefits in immunity, pain management, joint, cognitive, liver health, mood and stress support etc.
Other targets
Krishnan said that the company would continue to strengthen its product innovation, quality of products and service, and cost efficiency.
“If you look at Arjuna, the core strength is creating differentiated product solutions for customers. I want to build up on that – providing customer delight in multiple directions.”
“Finally, we should provide safe and sustainable product, because nowadays, if you look at safety and sustainability, if should be part of your life. You should have that embedded into your culture. And that's what I'm driving in Arjuna’s ecosystem to do all those things.
