Follow the money, and more often than not, it will lead to a guru a CEO of spirituality with fingers in many pies. The god business, run with corporate finesse, is a loss-proof proposition. Its a sublime way to make ridiculous wealth.For Baba Ramdev, yoga and Ayurveda have been the main money-spinners since he shot to fame in 2004.

Besides crusading against corruption and black money, he runs a 100-bed hospital, an Ayurveda college, a university, a real estate business and a mini hospitality industry at the sprawling Haridwar campus of Patanjali Yogapeeth.

Herbal kick The business operations are divided among four trusts: Divya Yog Mandir, Patanjali Yogapeeth, Patanjali Gramodyog and the recently-formed Bharat Swabhiman.

The Ayurvedic medicines and products are manufactured at a 150-acre facility near Haridwar. We have a three-pronged distribution channel. While all the Ayurvedic medicines are marketed through Patanjali Chikitsalaya, the products are marketed through Arogya Kendras. There are 960 chikitsalayas and 2,342 kendras in the country, says Jaishankar Mishra, the editor of the in-house magazine Yog Sandesh.

The Patanjali Yogapeeth Trust takes care of the Ayurveda college, the university, and the hospital. The college gives a degree of Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medical Sciences (BAMS). It is a four-and-a-half-year course with one year of on-campus internship. We have also started Acharyakulam a school where children are taught in the Vedic tradition, Mishra adds. The first batch of the school has started this year with 250 children from across the country.

The annual fee for a student is Rs 1,60,000, which includes boarding and meals.

The Patanjali University, which confers Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Arts in yoga and yoga-related subjects such as philosophy, psychology and Sanskrit, has at least 300 students. The pro vice-chancellor Kartar Singh, a retired Brigadier, is quick to point out that the fees are highly subsidised compared to the government colleges.

The sprawling campus has other lucrative uses. Ramdevs trust has come up with a unique model for three kinds of flats for the elderly. Category I, Ganga, the biggest in size, comes for Rs 21 lakh; Yamuna is Rs 11 lakh and Saraswati Rs 5.5 lakh. Any person of the age of 50 and above can apply for these flats, says Mishra. One can start living there once the payment is made. If the person dies, the spouse gets to use the accommodation. But once the spouse dies, the flat goes back to the trust and is re-allotted. These flats have ACs, reverse osmosis, geysers, and pipeline gas connections.

Apart from these flats, there are seven towers in the campus for visitors, where the per day charge varies between Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. The towers can host 10,000 people at a time.

Ramdev is also getting into publishing with encyclopaedias on yoga and Ayurveda. Little wonder then that from Rs 2 crore, the Patanjali Yogpeeth Trust had grown to a mammoth Rs 178 crore in 2010. The lust for zeroes continues in 2013, though the babas lieutenants claim that a large part of the earnings come from donations.

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No business, like God business: India's godmen find spirituality to be profitable