Chennai-based Gourmet Popcornica has won the Changemaker Financial Transformation award in the 8th edition of the businessline’s Changemaker Awards 2026.
Founded in 2014, the company has gone all out to build the country’s popcorn value chain, from hybrid seed and farmer partnerships to kernel processing, storage, supply to cinema halls and branded retail products.
The company has initiated growing popcorn maize domestically that has also helped to bring down its imports from 70 per cent a decade ago of India’s demand to 15 per cent currently, even as domestic production has expanded over 2-½ times.
It has also created India’s first fully integrated farm-to-consumer popcorn ecosystem and becoming the country’s largest popcorn producer.
Receiving the award, SBP Pattabhi Rama Rao, Managing Director, Gourmet Popcornica said, “We did not have a grand plan to become the fifth largest in the world. We had a simple, stubborn idea — Indian farmers can grow the world-class popcorn if they had the quality seed, economic guidance and ensure procurement prices and payments directly on their bank accounts.”
He also said there are 17,500 farmers who are part of Gourmet, spread out across eight States, 40,000 acres and 60,000 tonnes of production.
“We are proud to state that one in two popcorn kernels consumed anywhere in India today, comes from our homestate — is the Andhra popcorn...it is the improvement in the quality of life of farmers that has worked with us. It is the fact that today every Popcornica farmer has an assured contract before a single seed has been planted, a first for Indian agriculture in a commercial crop,” he said.
Until 2015, the Indian popcorn market comprised popcorn maize grown in Karnataka and imported ones. With the steady expansion of maize cultivation for popcorn, the market size has grown from 50,000 tonnes to 1.3 lakh tonnes, with domestic production rising from 15,000 tonnes to 85,000 tonnes, Rao added.
Published on September 22, 2026
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