The document discusses the commercialization and branding of yoga in Western cultures. It provides background on the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), an advocacy group concerned that yoga is being marketed without acknowledgement of its Hindu roots. The document also profiles two famous yoga gurus: Bikram Choudhary, who aggressively copyrighted his yoga style, and Tara Stiles, who teaches a more secular form of yoga. HAF has launched a campaign called "Take Back Yoga" to educate people about yoga's origins in Hinduism.

1. Harvard business School Cas
Branding yoga

2. What is yoga?

3. A physical, mental and spiritual discipline
originating in ancient India
In 2008,almost 16million people in U.S,
were practitioners of yoga
These practices ranged from meditative to
highly athletic styles
Yoga practice was found in Indus
Valley archeological relics

4. What is haf?
Who is bikram choudhary?

5. Bikram choudhary
Yoga guru
(HAF)
HINDU AMERICAN
FOUNDATION, an advocacy
group for Hinduism in the U.S

6. Tara Stiles
Yoga guru

7. What is the present situation?

8. Yoga is one of the ancient rooted culture of
India which had its origin from Hinduism
In a way yoga is now being
commercialized without its root from the
Hindu faith
HAF’s concerned about the marketing culture
of yoga in U.S and has launched a campaign
“Take Back Yoga-Bringing to Light Yoga’s
Hindu Roots”
The Indian govt. has already began to
catalog 1,500 yoga poses in a digital
library, attempting to insure to keep its
copyright.

9. YOGA and Marketing

10. WHY STUDY THIS
CASE?

11. Analysis of this case creates awareness
about Indian culture
OBJECTIVES OF THIS
CASE
The difference between the Western culture
and the Indian roots

12. The yoga gurus who commercialize yoga for
profits
Debate of the origin of yoga from different
religions

13. Understand the relationship between
marketing strategy and different market
situations
Branding a culture into a trend
Setting research objectives

14. Prime topics of the case

15. Who is
bikram choudhary???

17. A yoga guru who promoted yoga in the West
during the first 20th century
Left India in 1970, after studying yoga from
his guru Bishnu Ghosh from the age of four
Opened his first yoga studio in Los Angeles
By 1979, he obtained his first copyright for his
book Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class
By 1984 he launched his company trademark
Bikram’s Yoga college of India

18. IN 1994, he began to offer an intensive
teacher-training course which led to a number
of studios
By 2000, he accelerated his training program
turning about 200 teachers a year
His college offered certificates to teachers
after two months of training
His studio was taking $1000 a day, which
takes $20 per day, a 10-class package cost
$100.

19. In 2002 he learned other yoga instructors
used his methods with other concepts
In 2002, he sent a cease-and-desist letter to
the owners of a yoga studio in Costa Mesa,
California
His copyright was violated and hence he
fined $150,000 at start
He filed a a lawsuit against them and reached
a settlement in 2003.
By April 2003, he had more than 700 studios
in 220 countries

20. In 2003 Open Source Yoga Unity(OSYU)
based in San Francisco, California filed suit
against the yoga guru
It claimed that Yoga cannot be copyrighted
,poses cannot be treated as private property
In 2005 they settled for a mutual agreement
to looking forward to work together
By 2011,5000 Bikram Yoga studios had
opened around the world which made him
earn $5 million a year

21. Bikram continued to hunt down perceived copy cats and send cease-and-
desist letters

22. And now…

23. Who is
Tara Stiles???

25. A yoga guru who has her own styles of
teaching yoga
She loved ballet and had early experiences of
yoga were personal and drew from different
traditions
In 2006, she went on several fashion shoots
that involved yoga apparel and promotion of
her You-Tube videos of yoga on behalf of
Ford Agency
In 2007, Stiles left Ford and began to use
Facebook to promote yoga classes she
taught in her apartment

26. The Huffington Post and The Women’s Health
hired her as a blogger
In 2008, she opened her own yoga studio,
Strala Yoga in New York’s NoHo district
Her teachings were highly secular and did not
use Sanskrit words for poses or chants in
class
She created controversy because she was
making yoga cool because in society, brands
that succeed stay relevant

27. In 2009, Stiles worked with automaker Nissan
which sponsored promotional videos that
discussed approaches to exercise
In 2010, Chopra and Stiles also released a
yoga iPad app, “Authentic Yoga” which made
yoga learning easy
At the end of 2010, workout maven Jane
Fonda reintroduced her fitness brand and
debuted “Team Fonda” a group of fitness
instructors
Stiles did not think to patent her yoga classes
like Bikram does

28. What is
-haf???

30. An advocacy group for Hinduism in the U.S is
The Hindu American Foundation
In 2008, it attacked the U.S edition of Yoga
Journal which was a popular American yoga
magazine
It showed yoga with no resemblance with
Hindu faith but Jainism, Buddhism, and
Christianity
It decided to launch” Take Back Yoga-
Bringing to Light Yoga’s Hindu Roots”

31. HAF senior director Sheetal Shah published a
position paper
Its main tenets were that “yoga is a lot more
than asana . . . and yoga in its entirety is
rooted in the Hindu philosophy,” she said.
HAF began to present the paper in settings
such as the 2009 Council for a Parliament
of the World’s Religions in Australia

32. In March 2011, Sheetal Shah of HAF,
Tara Stiles, Dr. Edwin Bryant of
Rutgers University, Dr. Virginia Cowen
of the City University of New York, and
Edwin Stern, founder of Ashtanga Yoga
NY, participated in a discussion at
Princeton University called “The
Politics of Yoga.” The event was
recorded, and videos were posted to
YouTube. Topics included the
definition of yoga, the
commercialization of yoga, the validity
of yoga as exercise alone, and whether
yoga belonged to Hinduism or to any
one tradition. Shah said, “What we
noticed . . . was that . . . while [Western
yogis] are very accepting of the fact
that yoga is rooted in ancient India,
there was a tension with calling it
Hindu, or even accepting the fact that it
was rooted in Hindu philosophy.”78

33. ANALYSIS…

34. Gone are the days of the yogi teaching a group of disciples in
a mountain ashram, unless said disciples are students with
the means of paying upwards of $1,000 a pop.
Business has identified yoga as profitable
Commercialization also signifies substantial demand for
yoga, which creates the benefit of a maturing industry that
increasingly attracts more resources, particularly financial,
that can then help support the livelihoods of a growing
number of teachers and studios thereby keeping the practice
dynamic and authentic.

35. It must be recognized that commercialization quite simply is
a large part of the current reality of yoga in the West. This
pattern of commercialization can be seen in many
subcultures that have

36. YOGA has its origin from Indian roots having Hindu faith which is
not being accepted by the West. It is a Vedic knowledge where
Hinduism is its origin. Several yogis to commercialize yoga or term
them as its private property are just in the name of marketing
business

37. Yoga was associated with quieting the
mind, transcending the physical self, and
attaining communion with the divine.