What lies beneath: The untapped health tourism market in India and the role of social venture capital in rejuvenating Ayurveda tradition

Abstract

There are innumerable examples of the rejuvenating capability of Ayurveda, but still those are not fully recorded and made academically available. Ayurveda, the traditional system of healing is based on the theory of balancing the body, the soul, and the mind. The present paper tries to find out the reason why people still consider Ayurveda as a life rejuvenator. This is followed with an overview of the historical perspectives of Ayurveda in India and in particular Kerala. Various problems faced by the Ayurvedic treatment centers are analysed to get an insight on the practical difficulties with possible measures to rectify the existing problems to make Ayurveda as a health tourism product. If timely care is taken (both private as well as government), Ayurveda can be effectively marketed (both domestically as well as internationally) as a health tourism product. But the ultimate success lies in developing a marketing strategy for promoting Ayurveda with a view of generating awareness among people about Ayurveda, this will in turn make more people to travel for health care towards Kerala, and this will lead to duel impact; firstly rejuvenating the Ayurveda tradition in Kerala, and secondly in turn Ayurveda helps in rejuvenating the health of people. Finally, by capitalizing on the transformational capability of social venture capital Ayurveda tradition in India and elsewhere can be rejuvenated in the coming years.