In today’s Finshots we tell you how India went from importing French fries to becoming one of the world’s biggest exporters of processed potatoes.

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Now, onto today’s story.

The Story

The global French fries market is worth around $24 billion.

But if you rewind by a couple of decades, India was nowhere in the picture or close to making or exporting these crispy snacks.

Fast forward to today and the story looks very different. Potatoes have become India’s most eaten vegetable, and French fries have found their way into just about every menu. For context, India now produces a whopping 60 million tonnes of potatoes every year, second only to China. And we’re not just eating them, we’re exporting them too. In FY25 alone, India shipped frozen potato products worth ₹1,817 crores. That’s nearly nine times what we managed just five years ago, when exports were barely ₹217 crores. And quite surprising too, considering that India was once a net importer, bringing in 5,000–7,000 tonnes of potatoes a year in the mid-2000s.

Which naturally makes you wonder — how did this crispy love affair with French fries really begin? And how did India turn into such a big player in the game?

To begin with, it makes sense that India was once an importer of potatoes and fries. After all, the potato isn’t even native to India. It first sprouted in the Andes of South America and only made its way here in the late 16th or early 17th century, thanks to European traders.

The Portuguese are believed to have brought the ‘batata’ to the Malabar coast, but it was the British who really pushed it across the country, especially in Bengal. For them, the potato was a handy famine-relief crop and a reliable staple that could thrive in India’s varied climates. And that’s how it became part of our home kitchens.

But these were just your everyday table potatoes — the kind you’d buy in a local market and cook at home. They didn’t fetch much money, mainly because India didn’t yet have the right varieties for processing or export. International buyers also demanded strict quality standards, and most small farmers simply couldn’t meet them. Add to that the lack of cold storage and transport facilities, and farmers didn’t have much incentive to grow potatoes commercially. In fact, things were often so bad that farmers in states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal sometimes had to dump their produce, or even replant the same potatoes back into the soil, because selling them in the market wouldn’t cover their costs.

That began to change in the early 2000s, thanks to McCain Foods — the world’s largest producer of frozen potato products and the brand most of us know for its ready-to-cook snacks like French fries, burger patties, aloo tikki and more. McCain came to India in 1998, dabbling in agricultural R&D and trying to build a frozen food market.

But it wouldn’t be fair to call them the pioneers because Lamb Weston, another American food giant, had been in India long before, importing frozen French fries for big star restaurants. McCain noticed how popular fries were getting and decided to join the party. And in 2007, they set up their first potato processing plant in Mehsana, Gujarat. And soon enough, it struck gold by becoming the exclusive supplier of frozen fries to McDonald’s, right after the US fast-food chain opened its first outlet here.

That momentum didn’t go unnoticed. Indian potato-processing companies like HyFun Foods, Iscon Balaji Foods, Funwave Foods and ChillFill Foods jumped onto the bandwagon, and today, they rank among the country’s biggest potato processors alongside McCain. They saw how global giants such as Cavendish, Lamb Weston, McCain and JR Simplot, built empires out of fries, and they wanted a bite of that pie too.

And the way they went about it was simple. They started striking contracts with farmers, agreeing on the price and quality of potatoes they’d supply. In return, farmers received benefits like assured prices and markets, access to credit, quality seeds, and guidance on better crop-growing practices.

But these weren’t the everyday potatoes you find in your kitchen. These were special varieties, bred specifically for processed snacks like French fries. Like Santana and Frysona, the two big names in the global fries game. These potatoes, originally from Europe, are oblong, yellow-fleshed, high in starch, and low in sugar. That’s what gives fries their perfect crispiness and golden colour. Indian table varieties just can’t match them as they’re too watery and sugary, which makes fries brown too fast or cook unevenly.

Interestingly, these foreign varieties thrive on Indian soil too, especially in Gujarat, where long days and mild, sunny winters are ideal for growing processing varieties of potatoes. On top of that, companies invested heavily in cold storage and logistics, making large-scale exports possible and sometimes even offering fries to overseas markets at prices lower than China.

This contract farming setup didn’t just change the lives of farmers, but also transformed fortunes of Indian potato processing companies. To put things in perspective, farmers saw their incomes jump by an average of 75% since 2017 and companies started exporting potatoes from being just a domestic supplier earlier.

Before this, countries in Southeast Asia, like the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia, as well as Middle Eastern markets relied mostly on the US and Europe, especially Belgium and the Netherlands, the world’s top exporters of frozen French fries, for their supply. But with the introduction of special processing potato varieties and contract farming, India became a reliable alternative, supplying French fries to markets that once seemed out of reach.

Indian scientists played their part too. The Central Potato Research Institute (CPRI), under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), developed varieties with low sugar and high dry matter — perfect for fries that stay crispy and soak up less oil. Which is also why India’s shipping frozen potato products around the world.

And that success sparked a wave of activity. More and more companies set up shop in Gujarat, diving into the manufacturing and sale of processed potatoes. In February this year, Indian frozen fries exports even crossed the 20,000-tonne mark for the first time. And Gujarat has been at the heart of this transformation, producing around 80% of the country’s processed potatoes.

So yeah, that’s the fascinating story of how India went from being a net importer of potatoes to a major exporter. And it’ll be exciting to see what happens next. 

Who knows, the day may not be far when we are neck to neck with large European fries exporters.

Until then…

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