• Symbolises care for everyone who has, in some way, created the popcorn before it reaches the customer.
• Unveiled jointly by Pattabhi Rama Rao, Managing Director, Gourmet Popcornica, and Thomas Peace, Director of Sales, Preferred Popcorn (USA), at the Gourmet Popcornica stall

Chennai, India; August 18, 2026: Gourmet Popcornica, Asia’s largest, and the world’s fifth largest, grower and processor of popcorn maize, today unveiled The Husk — its new global brand icon — at its stall at Big Cine Expo 2026, held at the Chennai Trade Centre. The unveiling was performed jointly by SBP Pattabhi Rama Rao, Managing Director, Gourmet Popcornica, and Thomas Peace, Director of Sales at Preferred Popcorn, the company’s long-standing international partner, based in the United States.

Every kernel of corn, before it becomes popcorn, before it becomes anything at all, it is held inside a husk: nature’s first act of care. The Husk is a hand-drawn mark shaped like a corn husk mid-unfurl — an outer curve that protects, and an inner line that reveals. It is designed to become as instantly recognisable to Indian consumers as an iconic mark is to a global one: a single symbol that will appear across every Gourmet Popcornica bag, facility, and communication going forward. 

“The Husk represents everything we have built over the last decade. It stands for the protection we extend to our more than 17,500 farmer partners across eight states in India, for the world-class quality we have proven can be grown on Indian soil, and for the innovation that connects the two. Unveiling it here, at Big Cine Expo, in the very industry that popularised popcorn for generations of Indians, felt like the right place to begin this new chapter,” said SBP Pattabhi Rama Rao, Managing Director, Gourmet Popcornica Pvt. Ltd.

“We have watched Gourmet Popcornica grow from a single-state operation into a global-scale supplier over the years of our partnership,” said Thomas Peace, Director of Sales, Preferred Popcorn, USA. “The Husk is a fitting identity for that journey — it is a mark that speaks to quality, care for the farmer, and ambition – values that, we, at Preferred Popcorn recognise well and are proud to stand alongside.”

The unveiling took place at Big Cine Expo 2026, Asia’s leading trade show and convention for the cinema exhibition and theatrical distribution industry, held August 18–19 at the Chennai Trade Centre. Popcorn has long been inseparable from the cinema experience, making the Expo a fitting stage for Gourmet Popcornica to introduce the mark that will now represent it to audiences across the country.

About Gourmet Popcornica

Founded in Andhra Pradesh in 2016, Gourmet Popcornica today works with over 17,500 farmers cultivating 39,500 acres of popcorn maize across eight Indian states, making it the largest in Asia and the world’s fifth-largest grower of popcorn maize within a single decade. Its unique farming model — under which farmers invest land and labour while the company funds inputs, technology, and guaranteed offtake — has lifted farmer incomes by approximately 40 percent. 

The company operates Asia’s largest popcorn processing facility in Musunuru, Andhra Pradesh, with four processing lines handling 29 tonnes per hour, alongside India’s largest popcorn-specific cold storage network of 45,000 tonnes and the country’s largest ready-to-cook popcorn premix plant.

Gourmet Popcornica was also the first to demonstrate that high-quality, non-GMO popcorn maize, on par with American benchmarks, could be successfully cultivated in India, and has extended popcorn cultivation to tribal farmers in Kondagoan, Chhattisgarh, and Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh.