While riding through the forests of Burma, our founder, Mr. M. Manal, saw a villager pacify a restless elephant by feeding it the root of the plant Rauwolfia serpentina. Fascinated by the plant’s effect on the elephant, he returned home to India to seek scientific evidence for why this particular plant would have such a beneficial, calming effect.
Young Manal’s mother gave him her bangles to sell so he could pursue his work, and Himalaya was born.
Once he fully understood the science behind this special botanical, Mr. Manal bought a hand-operated, tablet-compressing machine and began his work. At night, his shoulders would ache from producing a few hundred tablets, one small tablet at a time. But his hard work paid off. This remarkable plant would later become Serpina, the world’s first anti-hypertensive drug in 1934!
