Desi doc puts Viagra wannabe on Net, says business has gone up

Since it first hit the domestic market in August 1998 the entire production, 850,000 capsules, sold mainly through mail orders, has been picked up almost before it is packaged. That’s what the manufacturer claims. Because 1-TOP is not a one-shot affair, the claim is that it needs to be taken over a period of time, the clientele so far, given the average dosage of thirty capsules at Rs 400, works out to over 20,000.

The drug is the brain-childof a Ludhiana-based Ayurveda doctor, Pradeep Nagrath who markets it through his own company, Pentavox. The website says it all in a certain style that is, well, unique — “The company is the ultimate reverie & the mission of its main promoter, Dr Pradeep Nagrath — the man not behind the show but on the forefront — a qualified Ayurvedic consultant turned herbal technocrat-cum-self-made industrialist, who is also a missionary promoter of ancient Indian culture & heritage all over the world through the global promotion of Ayurveda – world’s oldest science of healing.”

Nagrath began exporting the drug as a dietary supplement to Holland and Dubai in 1990, but he decided to go in for the domestic market only after Viagra hit the market. “Seeing the craze for Viagra, I felt that we should inform people that we are here. But all that we wanted to do was to test the market. The response overwhelmed us. The idea for the website came later.”

“I was surfing the net and I checked out the sites relating toimpotence, can you believe, there are 3,000 of them. Most of them are useless.”

“We advertised the website only in the beginning of March and have already received over 500 hits. The real sign of the success of the site is the increase in number of phone queries. When we launched the drug in August, we were averaging over 1,000 calls a day. Slowly the number dropped down to 50 but ever since we advertised the site, the calls have climbed back to around 300 a day.”

“You will be surprised to know how widespread the problem is… After the initial apprehension we sometimes find people end up spending close to half-an-hour talking to us on the phone from Mumbai.”

Does the drug work? Nagrath is emphatic, “It works as well as Viagra in those cases where Viagra helps and it has also been found to have a beneficial effect in several cases where Viagra is of no use.”

But, then, why does he need to export it as a dietary supplement? “We have carried out our own clinical trials but we didn’t bother toget drug certification in Holland because that is a process which is carried out at the behest of the global petro-chemical lobby,” he said.

But he really hardsells the drug’. “1-TOP Capsules have been blended & balanced with choicest tonics, rejuvenators, memory invigorators, alternatives, aphrodisiacs… 1-TOP Capsules effectively restore lost vigour, lost masculine potency, lost fertility, improve libido…” It just goes on.

But the Ludhiana police have registered a case against Nagrath and three other “potency pill doctors” for newspaper advertisements contravening provisions of the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act 1954.)

The re-inventor’ of this ancient cure-all has only one regret. “I am not just a sex doctor, we make over 60 formulations which have all been successful in the West, but the success of this drug threatens to swamp everything.”