Das Potato! Meet the man who made Mehsana Asia’s french fries capital

Alpesh Navinbhai Patel, a potato grower from Sabarkantha district of north Gujarat, has a different story to tell. Five years back, Patel switched to growing a processing variety of potato, the ones used to make french fries and hash browns. In March this year, Patel earned more than ₹50 lakh selling potatoes grown in 180 acres, net of all costs, including the rent on 80 acres of leased land. That’s a jaw dropping income for a farmer in India where the average farm household earns less than ₹20,000 a month.

How did this happen? Patel grows Santana potato, a light-skinned oblong variety from the Netherlands, with a creamy yellow flesh, perfect for making french fries. These are grown under a contract and supervision of a processing facility and exporter based out of Mehsana in Gujarat. The company provides Patel with the seeds, the technical knowhow and an assured price before planting. In 2025, this guaranteed price was ₹13.5 per kg against the production cost of ₹7-8 per kg. With no price risks to worry about, Patel devotes his energy to produce the best quality tuber.

In a region which only grew regular table varieties (the potato you and I mostly consume at home) a decade ago, five districts of north Gujarat—Banaskantha, Sabarkantha, Mehsana, Aravalli and Gandhinagar—are now the hub of growing potatoes meant to be processed. Over the past few years, India has emerged as a leading supplier of frozen fries to markets in south east Asia and the Middle East, from being an importer till 2012.

In 2024-25, India exported frozen potato products worth ₹1,817 crore, a near nine-fold jump since 2019-20 when exports were a mere ₹217 crore, shows data from the commerce ministry.

47-year-old Haresh Karamchandani played an instrumental role in this makeover with his decade old venture, HyFun Foods, where he is the chief executive officer and managing director. The company commands a 40% share in the export market.

HyFun’s international client list includes the likes of Burger King and KFC across India and South East Asia, Walmart in the US, 7/11 in Japan and the Woolworths Supermarket in Australia. HyFun also manufactures the potato flakes used to make Pringles by Kellogg’s.

The Belgium of India

North Gujarat has become the Belgium of India, Karamchandani says, referring to the probable country of origin for french fries. That’s a longstanding dispute between France and Belgium which is yet to be settled. One version goes that US soldiers who tasted fries in the French-speaking Belgian city of Namur during World War I were the first to use the name french fries.

Potatoes were first grown by the Incas of South America 1,800 years ago. Spaniards who colonized South America introduced the tuber to Europe in the second half of 16th century. Potatoes reached India in the 17th century with Portuguese sailors and spread across the country. Today, Indians consume more potatoes than any other vegetable. With an annual production of over 60 million tonnes, it is the second largest producer globally after China. That’s the historical timeline of table varieties spanning centuries.

Processing-grade potatoes suited for french fries, which turned the fortunes of farmers in north Gujarat, is a more recent phenomenon. But how did a third-generation entrepreneur from a family trading in potatoes and onions play a leading role in this transformation? Here’s that story.

Das Potato!

Following India’s independence and partition, the Karamchandani family, who belonged to the Sindh province in present day Pakistan, migrated to Mehsana in Gujarat and started as a small retailer of vegetables. By the early 1960s, the family entered wholesale trade in potato and onions under the name Asandas and Sons.

Haresh Karamchandani’s father, the second generation of the family who ran the trading business with his brother, was not keen on his eldest son getting into the unorganized trading business. So he was sent off to a Catholic boarding school at Mount Abu, Rajasthan, when he was just four. But while pursuing his undergraduate degree in Ahmedabad, the junior Karamchandani ended up joining the family business in 1999. The daily grind of commodity trading sucked him in, but he eventually realized that conventional trading is a low margin business, limited by scale and geography of operation.

He then toyed with a few ideas like running a multiplex or a car dealership but eventually abandoned them since they weren’t his ‘true calling.’

Around that time, in 2007, the Canadian giant McCain Foods, the largest producer of frozen potato products globally, opened a manufacturing facility in Mehsana. The states’ long day length and mild yet sunny winters was suited to growing processing varieties, which is why McCain chose Gujarat, the fourth largest potato growing state in India, and not Uttar Pradesh or West Bengal.

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Following McCain’s entry into India, processing units came up in other states like Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. But none were successful because they could not source the right quality of potato.

Processing varieties like Santana have a high dry matter or starch, about 22% by weight, and low sugar content, unlike table varieties which are watery and are high in sugar. You can make fries from table potatoes but they will turn limp due to less dry matter, while the excess sugar in the tuber will make the potatoes caramelize and turn red on frying. Those won’t be the pale-yellow crispy fries which consumers love.

Seed-to-shelf

“I realized that we were in the right location (centered around Mehsana) to source processing grade potatoes and that there’s always room for a second player,” Haresh Karamchandani recalled during a late-night conversation in Ahmedabad last week. His hazel eyes and mellow voice softened the passion with which he spoke about potatoes.

By 2010, he had made up his mind on what would be a ‘seed-to-shelf’ business: a contract farming arrangement with growers and supplying frozen products to large B2B customers. The family was apprehensive. They had no prior experience in either manufacturing or exports. Investing over ₹60 crore and taking on a multinational food giant like McCain seemed like a big risk.

It took Karamchandani a good five years to get his dream project rolling. He visited Europe multiple times to set up the seed pipeline which involved importing tubers from tissue culture labs and multiplying them in farmers’ fields over three years. Also, manufacturing equipment had to be imported from the Netherlands.

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At times, it was nerve-racking. An advance of ₹2.5 crore paid to an equipment manufacturer in the Netherlands was nearly lost after the firm went bankrupt. The machines finally arrived after months of waiting, after the manufacturer was acquired by another company.

The business finally launched in 2015 under the brand name HyFun Foods. In 2016-17, it grossed a modest topline of ₹50 crore, primarily supplying frozen fries to hotels and restaurants in the domestic market. The big break came when the company won a deal in 2016 to supply fries to quick service restaurant chain Burger King in India.

In 2017, HyFun shipped its first order of frozen fries to Thailand which had a free trade agreement (FTA) in place with India. But as luck would have it, the shipment was rejected.

But how did HyFun turn into the export powerhouse that it is today? It began with a setback, recalls Karamchandani. In 2017, HyFun shipped its first order of frozen fries to Thailand which had a free trade agreement (FTA) in place with India. But as luck would have it, the shipment was rejected. The trader who imported the fries dealt in rice and knew little about the specifications required by the actual buyer, a supermarket chain. The fries were eventually sold at a discount to another buyer.

“Each mistake was a learning experience. But the quality we produced was at par with what Europe and the US was exporting. That gave us confidence and we eventually cracked the market in countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines,” says the CEO.

“We were pioneers in exporting frozen fries from India and instrumental in turning it into a large exporter,” he adds.

Cut to present, HyFun generated a topline of ₹1,325 crore in FY25 with an Ebitda margin of 18%. About 80% of its revenue still comes from exports of frozen products. But the next phase of growth, Karamchandani said, will be from the domestic market. Last year, HyFun went through a revamp to turn itself into a consumer brand, selling items like frozen pizzas, burger patties and pies, from being a B2B supplier and exporter.

The company has set itself a target to achieve a topline of ₹3,500 crore by FY28 and eventually tap the public markets with an IPO. It is aiming to double production capacity by next year with an investment of close to ₹1,000 crore.

Meanwhile, Karamchandani has hired top talent to run the show: a former ITC veteran for HyFarm (the farmer-connect and sourcing arm of the company) and a chef who spent years in Del Monte, a food and beverage company, to craft new age frozen products for India.

To be sure, HyFun is the largest exporter of frozen fries but it is not the only player. Following in its footsteps, others like Iscon Balaji, Funwave Foods and ChillFill Foods have joined the frozen potato wave in Gujarat. This is in addition to the established wafers (chips) market led by companies like PepsiCo and ITC.

The growing share of processing has benefited farmers the most, said Brajesh Singh, director of the Central Potato Research Institute, Shimla. Singh added that currently, an estimated 10% of potatoes grown in India are processed which has helped to stabilize farmgate prices. Earlier, glut and distress sales were frequent during harvest season.

“Manufacturers of frozen fries have done a remarkable job of capturing international markets, supplying premium quality at a competitive price,” Singh says.

The average export price for frozen potato products was just under ₹100 per kg in FY25, shows data from the commerce ministry.

Sustainable fries?

The quest for the perfect fries is an elaborate affair. At the HyFun factory in Ganeshpura, Mehsana, two production lines have a capacity to churn out 11 tonnes of frozen fries every hour. The process is fully automated: the tubers are mechanically washed, steam softened and peeled, trimmed, sliced, blanched and partially fried. The final step is quick freezing which impart a shelf life of 18-24 months without using any preservatives.

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How climate friendly are these fries? The manufacturing process is a water guzzler. The multiple production lines at HyFun use three million litres of fresh water every day. But a treatment plant also recycles 90% of the wastewater which is reused in the factory. The goal to minimize its fresh water footprint is driven by the reality that Mehsana is a water stressed area.

Besides, sustainability is non-negotiable for both investors and overseas clients.

“When you inspect a house, you begin with the toilet,” says Amit Badlani, who heads Vihaan, the sustainability arm at HyFun. Baldani’s quirky reference is not out of place: international clients often insist on seeing the effluent treatment plant first, even before they visit the processing facility, he says.

Water, however, is not the only sore spot. To make those perfect fries, a lot of potatoes are wasted. It takes about 1.75 kg of potatoes to make one kg of fries. Currently, the solid waste is sent for cattle feed but HyFun is in the process of setting up a compressed bio-gas plant to use the waste more effectively.

At the end of the day, munching on fries at a quick service joint may not be the most climate-friendly way of eating potatoes. But then, who can say no to fries? It’s a $24 billion market globally. Besides, as Haresh Karamchandani predicts, “the future (of food) is frozen.”