CHENNAI: Long before he became India’s biggest popcorn farmer, M Pattabhiraman was known as the man behind Cookie Man. Today, however, the entrepreneur has earned a different title India’s “corn king”.
The managing director of the Chennai-based Gourmet Popcornica has built what is arguably the country’s most integrated popcorn ecosystem, creating a farm-to-snack supply chain that now accounts for nearly half the popcorn consumed in India.
“One in every two popcorn kernels sold in India comes from Andhra Pradesh, and it is grown by us,” Pattabhiraman tells DT Next.
“Eleven years ago, we were a Rs 9-crore business. At that time, I didn’t have the guts to tell anybody that we would become a Rs 500-crore company,” he recalls.
Today, it commands nearly 48 per cent of India’s popcorn market, works with 17,500 farmers, and has expanded cultivation to over 40,000 acres of land. This has led to the once largely-imported corn into a thriving domestic popcorn industry.
The journey began with a simple question. Around 2014, cinema chains were grappling with erratic popcorn imports. Curious about the economics, Pattabhiraman dug deeper. India had grown popcorn since the 1970s, mainly in Karnataka’s Chikkaballapur and Doddaballapur regions, but the varieties produced yielded only about 22 litres of popped corn per kilogram. In contrast, imported varieties from Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and North America delivered 42-48 litres.
“The whole game was how many litres you get from one kilogram,” he explains. Though he came from a farming family, popcorn was unfamiliar territory. “I didn’t know the difference between dent corn, sweet corn, and popcorn. We were learning everything from scratch.” The company’s first research trials in Andhra Pradesh during the summer of 2016 yielded 28 litres per kg, an improvement, but far from the target. The team did not give up. It conducted another trial later that year.
“This time we got 42 litres for one kilogram. The next year, we planted 840 acres.” That first commercial crop in FY18 rewrote everything. As yields improved and quality stabilised, revenues doubled to Rs 45 crore in FY19. Acreage, too, expanded rapidly from 840 to 2,500, then 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, and now more than 40,000 acres of popcorn cultivation.
“We are the first and perhaps the only company to purchase 100 per cent of the crop. We don’t allow any middleman to come in. Every farmer is paid directly.”
The model is built around farmer participation. Gourmet Popcornica provides agronomy support, finances inputs, and guarantees procurement, ensuring security for farmers.
“Our margin is only about 5-7 per cent. Everything else goes back into the farming system because unless farmers benefit, the model is not sustainable.”
The company’s fortunes became closely tied to India’s multiplex boom. Then came COVID-19. With cinema halls shut, Gourmet Popcornica’s primary sales channel disappeared almost overnight. But where many expected a disaster, Pattabhiraman saw an opportunity. “COVID forced us to think differently. It pushed us beyond multiplexes into retail and alternate channels. In hindsight, that period strengthened the company.”
Most popcorn hybrids were developed for North American conditions and adapted imperfectly to Indian weather. “We asked ourselves: why not create a popcorn seed grown in India, for India?”
A strategic tie up with US biggie Preferred Popcorn followed. The company launched a breeding programme to develop tropical hybrids suited to local conditions. Today, nearly 16,000-17,000 acres are already planted using India-grown seed, with a fully indigenous hybrid expected within a few years.
The pivot ensured survival and ultimately accelerated growth, turning it into one of the world’s largest integrated popcorn businesses. But success has brought new challenges. Pattabhiraman says domestic producers continue to battle unfair competition from smuggled imports routed through Nepal and under-invoicing by traders seeking to evade duties. “We are not asking for protection. We are asking for a level-playing field. If the government has decided on a duty structure, then it must ensure that duty evasion does not happen.”
Technology has become another pillar of the transformation. Traditional popcorn planting is labour-intensive, with workers often remaining bent over for several hours. To reduce drudgery and improve efficiency, the company has embraced drones for spraying nutrients and crop protection chemicals, and has begun testing mechanised corn-cob harvesters across thousands of acres. At the processing end, its Andhra Pradesh facility can handle 29 tonnes an hour across four lines, making it India’s largest popcorn processing plant and one of the biggest outside North America.
As the popcorn business matures, his ambitions are getting bigger. The company has expanded into oil palm cultivation and now manages about 48,000 acres across crops. The next target is audacious: 1.5 lakh acres by 2032. “It sounds ambitious. But we were at zero 10 years ago and today we are at 48,000 acres. If we could do that, then 1.5 lakh acres is achievable.”
Having transformed popcorn, Pattabhiraman is now applying the same playbook to oil palm. His pitch to farmers is straightforward. While three crops of paddy typically fetch about Rs 50,000 an acre annually, mature oil palm can generate more than Rs 2 lakh and, at current prices, as much as Rs 2.8 lakh per acre. The challenge is the three-year wait before returns kick in. To bridge that gap, Gourmet Popcornica is encouraging farmers to grow paddy between rows of young palm trees. What began as a 30-acre experiment has spread across Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, where the company has become a major catalyst for oil palm cultivation.
From a chance observation in a cinema hall to a Rs 500-crore agri-business spanning popcorn, seeds and oil palm, Pattabhiraman’s story is ultimately about building ecosystems, not products. “When we started, very few people believed India could become a serious popcorn producer. Today, we’ve shown it can be done at scale.”
The former Cookie Man boss may have entered popcorn by accident. But in doing so, he has created an entirely new agricultural industry, one kernel at a time.