Chennai: On New Year’s Eve, Shobhit Bakliwal laid out a vast spread for his merry gang of 12, who had gathered in his apartment to give 2026 a boisterous welcome. The menu for that first supper featured a wide variety of culinary items, from a cross between a pizza and a sandwich, to paneer tikkas, soya chaap, pakoras, fries and a host of frozen snacks. All those items, however, had one thing in common: they emerged from Bakliwal’s newly acquired air fryer.
By the time the party wound up, the guests had polished off everything. Since then, the air fryer has become an intrinsic part of the Bakliwal kitchen. “We wanted to eat healthy and tried stopping fried food. But we ended up ordering snacks very often. That’s when we decided to get an air fryer. It was quite cheap—less than ₹5,000,” recalls the 33-year-old.
Health and convenience were two big factors in the family’s decision to purchase an air fryer. “Our oil consumption and ordering out have come down drastically,” says Bakliwal, who is the founder of software startup Indusbit. “I just pop the food in and set the timer. I don’t have to stand next to a hot stove, or worry about switching it off. I know the timer will go off, and the food will be ready.”
The techie is not alone in embracing the air fryer. A little over a decade after the appliance was introduced in India by Philips, it is slowly finding a place in the kitchens of well-off Indians.
Demand for air fryers is on the rise in urban areas, particularly among younger, digital-first consumers, say various companies making the appliance, citing their sales growth.
According to consulting firm Kearney, the size of India’s air fryer market stood at ₹600-700 crore in 2025, with annual growth at 14–16%. In contrast, the much older microwave market—which saw widespread adoption begin in the 1990s—was worth ₹2,200–2,500 crore in 2025, with annual growth under 7%.
Today, aside from Philips, established companies such as Pigeon, Havells, Prestige, Kent, Morphy Richards, Milton, and Bosch, as well as internet-first brands Inalsa, Solara, Agaro, iBell, EDT, and Nester, among others, offer consumers numerous air fryer options. In all, there are at least 30 Indian and international brands spoiling the Indian consumer for choice.
Indeed, Amazon India says air fryers are among the fastest-growing kitchen appliances on its platform, more than doubling year-on-year growth. Nearly nine out of 10 customers purchasing an air fryer on the platform are first-time buyers, indicating the growth potential.
“The demand is broad-based, with both metro and non-metro cities driving growth. The category is outpacing several established kitchen appliance segments in terms of growth rate, attracting a younger, digitally native customer base,” says an Amazon India spokesperson.
What began as a niche product sold largely to health-conscious early adopters and gadget enthusiasts has now become a category in its own right. “Air fryers are having a mixie moment in India—not yet in absolute scale, but definitely in consumer relevance,” says Shashank Goel, partner at Kearney India.
Easier playing conditions
The mixer-grinder did not actually have a moment in India. The appliance was launched in the country in the early 1970s, by Sumeet, and took over 50 years to reach 70% penetration. Back then, the mixie was a luxury item found in rich homes. The rest of the country relied on manual grinding using a mortar and pestle. But as more brands came into the market and prices dropped, penetration grew. Political parties played a small part here in some states, giving grinders out as freebies to the poor to garner votes.
Other categories such as televisions, refrigerators and washing machines also have been around for a few decades now. While refrigerator penetration in India had risen to 64% in 2024, washing machine penetration was still below 25%, according to a joint report released in May by CLASP, a global energy efficiency nonprofit, and India’s Bureau of Energy Efficiency. Most other appliance categories are far smaller—microwave penetration is still only about 4%, with a sub-1% penetration in non-urban India.
But there is a nuance to the air fryer’s relatively rapid adoption. The appliance has been launched in an India that is more affluent, again relatively, than the one the mixie was launched in—market conditions and demographics today are a world apart from the 1970s. That has helped air fryers cover more ground quickly.
In just over a decade, the air fryer’s penetration has reached 5%, according to Gulbahar Taurani, managing director and chief executive of Versuni India, the appliance major that owns brands such as Philips and Preethi in India. Inalsa’s leadership believes the air fryer’s penetration in India is closer to 15%.
According to a report by 1digitalstack AI, a technology company that helps consumer brands scale up revenue on online marketplaces, sales of air fryers on Amazon India surged 132% on-year in the January-March quarter, outpaced only by chimneys (286% growth) and cooktops (146%).
From concept to countertops
It all began in 2005, when Dutch engineer Fred van der Weij wanted to make crispy French fries without deep-frying them. He built a prototype that combined a heating element with powerful circular air motion—this would become the classic air fryer technology. Global appliance major Philips acquired the global patent for his product and launched the first air fryer in 2010.
The air fryer was launched in India two years later, with a proposition that many consumers found hard to digest, of frying food without oil or with very little oil. Selling air fryers to Indians, who love to eat food drenched in oil, would be a tall task. It didn’t help that the price tag was nearly ₹15,000.
“Indians are smart consumers. They need to see value, but they will not compromise on taste,” says Taurani, who was leading Philips’ kitchen appliances business when the company introduced the appliance in India. Taurani took air fryer samples to a hotel management institute near his Gurugram office and got the trainees there to experiment with recipes. “When the samosas and the kurkure bhindi came out right, that’s when I knew it would find a market in India,” he says.
After the launch, the company invested in customer education, doing demos in supermarkets, and partnering with celebrity chefs on television and social media to create air fryer versions of popular Indian snacks. That gave Philips an initial boost.
“Today, in kitchen appliances, it is the air fryer era,” declares Taurani. The company has doubled annual air fryer production at its Ahmedabad plant to 2 million.
Taurani’s optimism is shared by others in the industry. “For the past three years, there has been an explosion of air fryer sales,” says Ravi Saxena, founder and chief executive of kitchen appliances and cookware brand Wonderchef, which he co-founded with celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor in 2008. “Once the first 1 lakh air fryers were sold, the reference sales started coming.”
Covid acted as an enabler, with the focus shifting to healthy eating and home cooking. Philips’ air fryer business today is roughly 20 times larger than its pre-covid levels. Wonderchef doubled growth in air fryer sales in 2025, and says it is on track to repeat that growth in 2026 as well. The air fryer is expected to become the fastest-selling cooking appliance for the ₹420 crore company this year, unseating kettles.
Air fryers are already the largest category for Inalsa, which started selling them in 2018, and account for roughly 30% of the e-commerce-only brand’s sales. Inalsa was among the first to introduce ceramic-coated air fryers, dual-basket models and larger 18-litre oven-style variants with viewing windows.
“We do not follow the market. If everybody is selling the same air fryer, you become just one more brand in the market,” says Jitendra Chauhan, chief executive and country head of Inalsa India, a subsidiary of Spain’s Taurus Group. Chauhan says Inalsa has delivered air fryers to over 10,000 pin codes, including Lakhadweep and the Andaman islands. The company’s Indian entity recorded revenue of over ₹181 crore and a net profit of over ₹16 crore in FY25.
Things didn’t always look this good for Inalsa. Founded in the 1960s as part of the Usha group, the company was acquired by Taurus in 2004. Prior to that acquisition, it had invested heavily in food processors but the gamble failed. “The market was not ready,” recalls Chauhan, who believes the air fryer is different.
Why the air fryer is different
Dr Nandita Iyer, a health coach, author and food writer, says the air fryer is seeing wider adoption after people realized it could do much more than just cook French fries with less oil. “Once people started seeing recipes for roasted vegetables, snacks and all sorts of dishes across social media, they realized it wasn’t a one-trick appliance,” says Iyer.
Take the case of Bengaluru-based entrepreneur Sunanda Jayaseelan. She is vegan, while her ad executive husband is non-vegetarian. “With the air fryer things get easier,” says Sunanda. “I marinate meat in the morning and it is easy to just pop it into the air fryer and grill it in the evening for my husband’s dinner.” She batch-cooks chickpeas for salads, along with coconut chips and beetroot chips for the week. Her older daughter, meanwhile, has started making fries and cookies.
Kearney’s Goel says it helps that the air fryer has gone beyond the microwave in consumer perception. “The microwave is still often perceived as a reheating device rather than a cooking appliance,” says Goel. The air fryer sidestepped this trap. “The proposition is simple and immediately understandable: healthier, low-oil cooking, with convenience,” says Goel.
Another factor that fuelled demand was a price crash. Wonderchef’s Saxena says air fryer prices have plunged by at least 50% in the past couple of years. “When we started selling them around eight years ago, the price was around ₹14,000. Now, you have air fryers starting at ₹3,000,” he says, attributing the price reduction to the growth of component suppliers both in China and in India.
Perhaps the biggest reason driving adoption is the perception that it is healthier to eat food made in an air fryer, particularly considering that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of deaths in India. The World Heart Federation estimates that nearly 2.9 million Indians died from cardiovascular diseases in 2021 alone. Deep-fried foods are one of the main culprits behind that death toll.
Scientific studies broadly support the idea that air frying is a healthier alternative to deep frying, though not necessarily because of the appliance itself. It is the lower requirement of oil that makes a difference. Studies have also found that air-frying can reduce the formation of some harmful compounds such as acrylamide—a chemical formed when starchy foods are cooked at high temperatures. For all that, however, the air fryer is not a magical cure.
The drawbacks
An air fryer is a tool… it helps people reduce excessive oil consumption; it’s not a health intervention by itself. Indians have many lifestyle diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and obesity. No appliance can solve these issues on its own,” says Luke Coutinho, a lifestyle expert who specialises in nutritional science.
While air fryers use less oil, that does not mean they automatically transform unhealthy food into healthy food, Coutinho points out. “If someone replaces deep-fried processed food with air-fried processed food while continuing to sleep poorly, remaining sedentary and consuming excessive sugar, the health impact will be limited,” he warns.
Moreover, some air-fried foods, such as samosas, can never match the taste of their deep-fried counterparts, says Bakliwal. And some are nonstarters—for instance, a poori made in an air fryer simply doesn’t taste like one, he adds.
Affordability also remains a constraint. While entry-level air fryers are now available for ₹3,000–4,000, these are typically 2–4 litre models best suited for couples or small families. Larger families often need 6–9 litre variants, which cost ₹8,000–15,000 or more. By comparison, an entry-level solo microwave oven without convection or grilling functions can be purchased for ₹4,500–6,000.
Next phase
Over a decade after the first air fryers entered India, many early adopters are looking to upgrade. For instance, Sunanda, the vegan, shifted from a Teflon-coated air fryer to the glass Luma, priced at around ₹12,000, a little over a month ago. Luma is the first product launched by one-year-old startup EDT.
Pune-based Zahra Khan, who already owned two Philips air fryers, has also bought a Luma. “I like aesthetics meeting functionality,” she says. Her previous air fryer worked well enough, but it often felt intimidating. Food was either undercooked or burnt and she disliked the bulky plastic-looking appliance sitting on her kitchen counter. “The Luma looks good on my countertop and is intuitive and easy to use,” says Khan.
“We knew the category needed reimagining. The question was no longer whether consumers wanted an air fryer. The question was whether we could build a better one,” says Naiyya Saggi, founder of EDT. While Saggi did not disclose the number of units sold, she says the product had a waitlist of over 11,000 at the time of its launch in December.
The air fryer has begun well in urban India, coming a fairly long way in a short time. “Indian consumers are clearly warming to appliances that make everyday cooking healthier, easier, or faster without demanding too much behaviour change,” says Goel. But it still remains an appliance for the better-off. As with the mixie, it might well take a political party to widen its penetration, offering it as a freebie to the poor.
Bakliwal, meanwhile, has popped more food into his Philips air fryer and is waiting for the timer to go off.