Everyone in the Indian subcontinent has some idea of what Hajmola is. For the longest time, it has been an ayurvedic medication used lightly to treat indigestion that was available in small packets or in small glass bottles over the counter at any general store.
Hajmola, however, was not just a medicine that some people took for digestive problems. It was also delicious. Tangy, soft, and teasingly delightful – the little brown tablets were an instant hit as soon as they were packaged by Dabur, an Indian ayurvedic medicine company that also has a manufacturing side in Pakistan. In Pakistan however, Dabur producing Hajmola
More than being used for indigestion, Hajmola started to be used as a small treat like any other candy or toffee. And that is why Hajmola, or more specifically the word Hajmola, is now at the center of a raging court battle between Dabur Pakistan and Hilal Foods over intellectual property rights.
As the world continues to grow more complicated, and as things of the past, like Hajmola, take on new meanings and conceptions in the minds and hearts of people, questions surrounding intellectual property – what constitutes it, how flexible it is, whether it can change or shift depending on time – are all becoming more complex by the day. This is just one small case in what is a much larger problem.
The Dabur story
Imagine this. It is the tail end of the 19th century. The British are firmly in control of the Indian subcontinent and crown rule is at its peak and Queen Victoria is at the height of her power and grandeur. As industry, science, technology and medicine develop and go through major breakthroughs of the era, anxieties surrounding the advent of modernity flourish.
At such a time, when politics and progress seem to threaten the very fabric of identity, people tend to turn back and look to places they are familiar with for comfort. It was at such a moment when Dabur India was founded. The consumer goods company, founded in 1884 by S. K. Burman, headquarters in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India manufactures Ayurvedic medicine and natural consumer products is a great demand even today for the concept of ‘safe’ medicines. Initially, when modern medicine became common, it was treated like the miracle it was. Young people no longer had to die of cuts, scraps, and seasonal fevers. However, this quickly developed into an over reliance on medicine.
The process did manage to self correct over the course of the 20th century, but then came the advent of the internet, and with it the idea that anyone could argue anything. It is, of course, natural to worry about what we are putting in our bodies. But the proliferation of these fears through the internet has resulted in the birth of people ranging all the way from those shy of over prescription, to people that believe in homeopathy, and those that we now call anti-vaxxers.
Ayurvedic medicine lies somewhere in between these extremes. It is not harmful, but it is not always scientifically proven, and when it is, its effectiveness is limited. However, it continues to be an extremely popular form of over the counter medication. In the mid-1880s, Dr. S.K. Burman was an Ayurvedic practitioner in Kolkata whose medicines were locally popular. Seeing demand increase for them and people coming to get them from distant areas, he decided to make the move of mass producing, packaging, and marketing his Ayurvedic solutions for common problems like cholera, constipation and malaria. He went on to set up Dabur India Ltd in 1884 to mass-produce his Ayurvedic formulations.
The company is today one of the largest fast-moving consumer goods companies in India, has spread internationally, and is a leader in the FMCG sector according to Outlook India. Over the years, the way Dabur has grown has been tactical, impressive, and a model for how family companies ought to be run. However, up until the late 1980s and early 1990s, the company was very much still a messy family affair.
“You need to understand that we were a family-run company with a heritage that is now 128 years old. I belong to the fifth generation of the family. Dabur’s operations were completely hands-on,” Dabur’s Chairman, Anand Burman, told Forbes India in an interview back in 2012. “I remember the first time we ever made a budget was when we had revenues of about INR 25 crore. In the 1990s, we realised that to scale up the business, we needed to change. And this kind of change doesn’t happen overnight but over 10 years. Luckily, there was a lot of maturity in the family, led by my father AC Burman and uncles, and we were ready for it.”
Under the fourth generation of Burmans, a seismic change took place within Dabur that rarely takes place in family run companies. The Burmans hired McKinsey to consult, created a family constitution, and a family council – and agreed to not take any executive positions in the company. As business scaled up, rising from INR 25 crore to over INR 100 crore.
This is also around the time when Dabur International began operating as well, and Dabur was looking for stakes in other parts of the world. One natural audience was obviously non-resident Indians living in the Gulf, Europe, and America. There was already a market there since Dabur had been exporting for a while now. But with the ownership separated from management, and the company looking to expand, it also began looking towards Pakistan. But when they got here, they found out people were already selling their products, and refusing to share in the market.
The Hilal shock
This story is essentially about Hajmola. The little brown tablets have caused legal battles that have ensued for over two decades now. Hajmola is a simple word, it rolls of the tongue and has a simple etymology, (it comes from the word ‘hazma’ which is pronounced ‘hajma’ in some parts of India) and one that can’t really be said to be owned by anybody, or that was until Hilal thought they could do exactly that.
When Dabur decided to sell products in Pakistan, it already knew that they would be popular because similar products existed in Pakistan already. After all, even though companies producing them can brand and put their own twist on products, Hajmola is a naturopathic medicine that no one can really claim ownership of. So in Pakistan, at least since 1982, Hilal had been producing Hajmola in Pakistan, packaged in orange and purple bottles similar to the ones Dabur used in India.
Now, Hilal went ahead and got a trademark on the word Hajmola in 1982. When Dabur, then operating as Asian Consumer Care Pakistan (Pvt), decided to manufacture Hajmola in Pakistan, Hilal sued them for violating their trademark by using the term ‘Hajmola.’ Dabur was naturally surprised, especially since companies like Forvil Cosmetics had already been making products like ‘Bio Amla Shampoo,’ which Dabur had been making in India. But since ‘Amla’ is an ingredient, they never thought that this would be a problem of intellectual property, and the same was the case with Hajmola.
Dabur responded by saying that they had trademarked the term Hajmola in India way back in 1958, and had been producing the product since 1884 and had as much of a right as anyone to use the word for their product. The 1995 case dragged on in the Sindh High Court for four years, and in the end, a decision was passed that allowed both Hilal and Dabur to use the word Hajmola in both their packaging and advertising. The decision was not challenged by either party, and it seemed that a compromise had been reached.
However, Dabur continued to grow in Pakistan. In 2006, Asian Consumer Care Pakistan (Pvt) was incorporated. As the competition between the two Hajmola brands grew, the legal cases did not stop and both at different points tried to get each others’ trademarks rescinded. This is because the two companies became entangled in a legal question: is using a trademark similar to another company hurting that company’s chances to fairly do business? The question is a complicated but critical one that requires definitions and arguing. But up until now, it has been Dabur that has stayed on top and gotten decisions in its favour. Perhaps that is why Hilal did what comes next.
The CCP steps in
Matters came to a head in 2020 when Hilal decided to send a letter to the Pakistan Broadcasting Association (PBA), and also gave advertisements to national newspapers including Dawn and Jang, in which they claimed that they had a trademark over the Hajmola name. This understandably infuriated Dabur Pakistan, whose stance on this has been vindicated by different courts in the past.
Dabur began the process by suing Hilal in the UK, where intellectual property is an issue taken more seriously. It then filed a complaint in Pakistan, and that is where the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) took over after a complaint was filed. The CCP has recently recommended the initiation of proceedings against Hilal Foods for disseminating false and misleading information regarding the exclusivity and affiliation of the brand name.
In the 2020 letter to the PBA, Hilal had laid claim to the trademark ‘Hajmola’ saying they were “the registered owner of the trademark, our client holds the exclusive rights of using, manufacturing, importing, selling, marketing, distributing, trading and dealing in any goods imprinted with the registered trade HAJMOLA in any manner whatsoever.”
While Hilal has insisted since then that the content of said letters cannot be construed as scandalous or misleading in any manner, and the allegation to that effect is baseless and ill-founded, this has not been appreciated by the CCP. Once again, Hilal’s claims were in contradiction with the previous orders of the court. However, the question we must remember is one of whether Hilal’s actions have resulted in a loss of business or has affected the business of their competitors, Dabur Pakistan. To this end, Hilal’s claim is that they have never carried out any anti-competitive agenda or made any offensive publications, and that they have simply safeguarded their interest.
The CCP, however, has held that the actions of Hilal have amounted to have the potential to inflict harm upon the goodwill and business interest of Dabur, whose customers may have been greatly confused and affected by the advertisement campaign that Hilal ran. As such, the CCP recommendation is that an inquiry be initiated against Hilal, which means that the matter will now go to court again. Except this time, what will be argued is not whether or not the trademark belongs to Hilal or Dabur, but just how badly Hilal has messed up by claiming that it is theirs in letters and advertisements.
The ending to this long saga is telling of how two different companies have operated over time. Dabur came to Pakistan as part of an expansion, and Hilal since the 1950s has essentially been looking at and observing ideas that Dabur had been using in India and abroad. When Dabur did come to Pakistan, they responded with fear and aggression rather than trying to be up to the challenge – especially considering that they have a more than 60 year lead in the Hajmola market within Pakistan.
