It would be most unusual to refer to the purveyors of spirituality as entrepreneurs but then that is what they, in a sense, are. They are on their own, they undertake their work with a great deal of passion and energy, and actually head organisations that generate serious revenues. Given the vast spirituality ‘market’ it is not surprising to find a bewilderingly large array of spirited entrepreneurs of spirituality.

Yet there are only a few that have acquired a pan-Indian or global following. The success of these few, therefore, offers many interesting marketing lessons to entrepreneurs from the temporal world. The first lesson would be: Unique, well-defined customer segment.

Each guru has a well-defined set of followers. There are hardly any overlaps and fewer instances of cannibalisation where one guru weans away followers from another. For example, one would be hard-pressed to find, say, a follower of both Sri Sri Ravishankar and Osho. Or of a Baba Ramdev and Mata Amritanandamayi. Each segment is uniquely defined.

The second that one can learn from the gurus of spirituality is that they have: ‘unique motifs’. Each guru has a unique motif that defines his or her message or persona. For example, Sri Sri Ravishankar has his Sudarshan kriya, Baba Ramdev has his Yoga, Swami Prabhupada had his Krishna Consciousness, Maharshi Mahesh Yogi had Transcendental Meditation, Osho had Dynamic Meditation — most significantly, Mata Amritanandamayi has her unique hugs.

Each guru also has a unique pre-fix or suffix that defines them. Sri Sri, Baba, Swami, Acharya, Mata, Bhagwan, Ma, Ma harshi, Amma and so on.

Some perform ‘miracles’, others talk in ‘holistic’ terms integrating everything from Christianity to Zen; others advocate a back to basics or back to nature approach. But each is unique in its appeal to a target audience.

The third lesson is: laser sharp initial focus, growth in concentric circles later. Each guru initially just had a focused simple spiritual message usually of enlightenment, how to live a stress free life, deal with personal angst and so on. Later, as the number of followers grew, the messaging reach spread up and down and across different customer groups. For example, Baba Ramdev, primarily a Yoga guru, now holds forth on AIDS, role of MNCs and fast-food; The Art of Living movement offers spiritual solace to Defence personnel and to prisoners; Deepak Chopra from mind-body medicine to Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and Kama Sutra. Swami Sukhbodhananda has corporate training programmes.

Almost all gurus today predominantly perform social service reaching out to many tens of thousands of people every day. They have established disciplined and sophisticated structures for co-ordination, command and control of operations.

The fourth lesson is: Communication, branding and positioning. The communication techniques are interesting as well. For example, some adopt the time-tested formula of having celebrities endorse them — politicians, film-stars, sports personalities.

Others use the well-known MLM (multi-level marketing) model where each follower organises local gatherings — usually a home, where the uninitiated are invited and so on down the hierarchy. Yet others use mass media, for example television, for reaching out to large numbers at a time. Mega events such as meditation camps, international meets on spirituality and consciousness with several national and international dignitaries in attendance.

Aggressive pamphleteering, noisy processions and colourful banners proclaiming the arrival or presence of the gurus are employed usually catering to the mass audience.

Gaining recognition abroad is an important element is getting acceptance at home. Indians love things `phoren’ and spirituality is no different. Most gurus started out at home, acquired celebrity Indian followers and then acquired foreign followers, which helped increase the following in India. Well, what do you think of these four lessons?

—The writer brings close to two decades of experience as an entrepreneur, corporate executive, venture investor, advisor and mentor. He can be reached at sanjay@jumpstartup.net. These are his personal views