Rohto Pharmaceutical Co. Limited. Headquartered in Osaka, Japan is a global healthcare company that inherits more than a century of legacy and innovation. In fact, just in the last month, it celebrated its 120^th anniversary of establishment. And, the miraculous thing about the company is it succeeded to its fourth generation of management from the same founding Yamada family. There are not many companies like this in the recent world. In Japan, Rohto is one of the very well reputed companies and highly admired by its consumers. Though it started as a pharmaceutical company at the beginning, over the years it evolved to a total healthcare company that bears in its core “Never Say Never” spirit to produce everything that helps people to be in good health.

In this recent time, we are very often confused by the range of products for any given categories, say it is food or cosmetics. We often go too deep into the ingredients or seek for words of mouth to get confidence about the product before purchase. One of the reasons is we do not know about the producer in most cases. If we know the companies’ approach to a product and the safety for human bodies, it becomes very easy to understand the level of commitment of the companies to its consumers. If we are confident to a company that has better quality products with higher efficacy, we can relay on the company’s vast offerings to meet most of the needs. This helps reduce the risk of health hazards and saves times regarding a purchase.

Rohto started its journey in 1899 with gastrointestinal medicine which became a massive hit during that time. Those brands still exist in the consumer medicine market with significant market share in Japan. In 1909, Rohto Pharmaceutical developed eye drops for daily care. Over the years it evolved dynamically with its originality. Rohto eye drops dominates the market till date with over 40% of the market share. In Japan, eye care is a part of daily life which was originally created by Rohto. This is how our product development philosophy was enrooted to the organization. We are used to take utmost care by nature to develop any product that deal with the most sensitive parts of our body. We don’t market any product if I am not confident to use those by our families and children. In Japan we treat customer as the most supreme guests, and we believe we must serve them with the best of our capacity. This like in Bangladesh we offer the guest Biriyani even though we eat daal-vat at home every day. The followings are Rohto Eye Drops.

By the way, Rohto is a Japanese company, but the name came from a German word. During our first eye drop development Dr. Rohtmunnd, a German professor of ophthalmology contributed a lot and we took our company name after his name and renamed the company as Rohto which is also very much unique case in Japan.

Rohto started skin care business in late 70’s and it was accelerated when it acquired The Mentholatum Company in 1988, which now possesses 130 years of history. Currently Rohto holds brands that are No.1 in Basic Cosmetics (HadaLabo), No.2 in UV Care (Skin Aqua), No.1 in Lip Care, No.1 in Acne Care (Acnes), No.1 or 2 in Mens (Deou, OXY) and many other premium and functional cosmetics such as Obaji, Epistem, CareSera, Sugao, etc. Globally it has several hundred brands with thousands of products. Those are being sold in over 140 countries. Rohto’s core uniqueness is that all of its products are developed with pharmaceutical standard and each of it serves exactly what it stands for.

 urrently, in Japan Rohto is a front runner of the R&D of regenerative medicine which will help the most difficult treatments of human organs. Such as skin, eyes, heart, etc. Stem cells are collected from human body to culture the cells of specific organ which is used to repair the damaged organs.

As a company it is our great pride that we kept being a responsible corporatesteward to the society from our inception. We believe we exist to make a difference in the society and make it a better place to live. When the Great Earthquake followed by a massive tsunami occurred in Mar 11, 2011, we immediately sent a team of Rohto employees who are still based there to help the community recover. We created fund that helps the disaster affected children to complete their education until completion of Master Degree. This is a commitment of 25 years and we already served the children for last 8 years.

Another story of 1964. In this year Tokyo hosted Olympic Games but unfortunately Japan did not win any medal in swimming. This was not accepted by our chairman at that time. He built the first ever full-fledged indoor swimming pool in the country in our Head Quarter premise in Osaka along with a dormitory. He invited all the female swimmers and professionally trained there until one of the trainees won gold medal in 1972 Berlin Olympics. Later he gave the swimming school to other entity as he finally could make a difference.

We build the first school for the blind in 1930s in Nara Prefecture which was visited by Helen Keller in 1936. We have different activities that help the advancement of Education, Science and sports in Japan.

We have been in Bangladesh for last eight years. Currently we OXY, Acnes and LipIce are the three major brands that we introduced to the local market. These are either imported or packaged in Bangladesh. In the future we want to manufacture these brands in Bangladesh so that our standard and know-how helps the industry to grow more and someday make us feel proud of Made in Bangladesh.

On Shajgoj.com we are launching HadaLabo which is No.1 in Basic Cosmetics category in Japan and now being sold in many countries in the world. In the next article we shall write what is Basic Cosmetics and why HadaLabo is better than any other of its kinds.