In the Bastar-Kondagaon region of Chhattisgarh, gunfire once defined life; it has now been replaced by the sound of popcorn popping.For S B P Pattabhi Rama Rao (PRR), MD of Chennai-based Gourmet Popcornica, the transformation exemplifies an unusual proposition: agriculture can be organised as an industrial supply chain while giving farmers in difficult regions a more predictable income.“Today, you hear popcorn pop, not bombs booming,” says PRR, who founded the company in 2014.Agriculture was not PRR’s original plan. From an agrarian family in Andhra Pradesh with roots going back generations, he studied mechanical engineering at the College of Engineering, Guindy, before joining the Taj in Mumbai. Working as an executive assistant to then Taj chairman Ajit Kerkar taught him to deal with unfamiliar territory rather than avoid it. In 2002, he joined Cookieman, then a single-store premium-cookie business in Chennai. As its Indian partner, he expanded it to about 70 stores and helped sell it to Everstone in 2018.Later, working with SPI Cinemas, PRR noticed that cinemas were importing expensive popcorn premix. With corn-import restrictions adding to the complexity, he began exploring whether it could be sourced and processed in India.The breakthrough came with a trip to Nebraska, US, in 2014, where he met Norm Krug, founder of Preferred Popcorn, one of America’s biggest popcorn companies. PRR wanted an exclusive arrangement for India. His pitch was deliberately blunt: “You can have a hundred girlfriends, but you can only have one wife. I want you to do an exclusive deal.” Krug laughed, and agreed to visit India. After a road show with cinema chains, the two firms signed a seven-year exclusive agreement. It was renewed in 2022 for another 20 years.The initial model was simple: import corn from Nebraska and process it in India into popcorn premix. SPI Cinemas was the first customer, followed by Inox and PVR in 2015.Growing the crop locally proved harder. A 12-acre trial in 2016 yielded just 28 litres of popped popcorn per kilo, against 38-48 litres from US varieties. A change in planting season lifted yields to 38-42 litres in a second 40-acre trial, after which acreage expanded rapidly.Covid reinforced the lesson: controlling the chain — from seed and farmer to processing and customer — was more valuable than simply supplying cinemas. Gourmet Popcornica now works with about 17,500 farmers across roughly 40,000 acres in eight states, including 8,000 acres in Chhattisgarh. It has commercial cultivation in AP, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, with other states at the trial stage. The company says it is the world’s fifth-largest grower of popcorn maize and India’s largest, and claims a 69% share of India’s pre-mix popcorn segment.Its revenue for FY27 is projected at `500 crore, against `355 crore in FY26. In FY15, its revenue was `9 crore. But the more consequential part of the business may be the system built around the crop. Farmers sign contracts before receiving seed. They get a price before planting and inputs financed without interest or margin. Digital ledgers track costs and earnings, while the company commits to buying the contracted output. The objective is to reduce uncertainty for farmers adopting unfamiliar crops while giving the company greater control over raw material.The next phase goes beyond popcorn. Gourmet Popcornica is developing corn and mustard seed and has entered oil palm, with around 8,000 acres under cultivation. In leased paddy land, it is experimenting with elevated “islands” for oil palm trees. The common thread is reducing India’s import dependence by building domestic farm-to-market supply chains. After popcorn, oil palm is the next big avenue. By FY31, the B2B company aims to have more than 100,000 acres under popcorn, seeds and oil palm, targeting combined revenue of 1,500 crore by 2032. “My business is not oil palm, popcorn or seed. It’s farming,” PRR says.
