April 25, 2008

Health shops Vs Beauty shops

Dial for Health, Planet Health, Health Conscious. These are some swanky shops that sell medicines – oops, sorry, they don’t sell medicines but beauty products.

I think everyone of you have gone through this experience of getting into one of these chain of shops to buy a life saving drug and then returning with a shampoo, soap or a napkin. Yes, because the chances are they may not have the drug you have asked for. They are just an extension of the big mall culture that is coming up in the country. You will need to go to the medicine shop nearby your home or office to buy that tablet.

Planet Health claims it is a niche distributor of natural health products selected for their quality, reputation, innovation, ethics and philosophy. But I don’t see any of these. I always got a no to any sundry medicine I asked for. Instead they push for their membership card saying it has lot many benefits.

Dial For Health says they will deliver the products home. But the pity is that they don’t have any health products. They have beauty enhancing products instead. Go to any shop and you can yourself see how much space is consumed by health and how much by beauty. The biggest problem, as I see, is that many of these shops are owned by pharmaceutical companies. Dial for Health is by Zydus Cadila. But the irony is that even their own products are not available in these shops.

No comments: