Starter Kit. Idea 110 of 500. Cluster 5
A Sri Lankan Ayurveda brand with clinical trials behind three products, not three hundred
The mechanism, from the book
Ayurveda is a system of medicine the world already recognises and seeks out. The demand is there; what Sri Lanka needs is more of its own names, known and asked for abroad.
The first step
Pick the three formulas from your family or firm that customers already come back for, and write down what each is used for. Take that list to a researcher in a university pharmacy or medical faculty and ask what a small, properly designed trial would cost and how long it would take. Their written estimate is the first proof that the brand can be built on evidence.
- Who pays first
- A pharmacy or health-food buyer in Europe who will stock Ayurveda only when the label can point to a published trial.
- What leaves today
- Without published evidence, Sri Lankan formulas stay on the cheap, unregulated shelf, and the trusted pharmacy shelf goes to whoever did the trials.
Ask first
- National Medicines Regulatory Authority. Ask what evidence is needed to register a product that makes health claims.
- Department of Ayurveda. Ask which institutions could run proper trials on Ayurvedic products.
Check before you spend
Which ethics approval a trial needs, which products have the strongest case, and what a trial must show for buyers abroad to accept it.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a small clinical trial cost?
- Which three products have the best evidence already?
- Which buyers abroad would pay more for tested products?
A comparison from the book
Costa Rica. Chapter Eleven
"The money was never in the samples. It was in the testing, the trials and the patents."
The value is in the testing and the trials, not the raw ingredients.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.