The thought may be revolting, eroding the charm associated with the steamy hand-pleated snack from the Himalayas. But it makes sense for restaurants and small eateries. They can buy frozen, ready-to-steam-and-serve momos for as low as ₹5 per piece, rather than hire skilled hands to make it fresh. Frozen ones can be stored up to a year, and often taste better than those sold by street side vendors.
In the dusty by lanes of a manufacturing hub in Noida, Nitin Panwar and his partner Amit Pul from Nepal, run one such factory, named Momos Pro. It’s a three-storey building next to a small garment manufacturing unit. Inside, the floor space, measuring about 6,000 sq. ft, hosts a kitchen, a blast freezer, a cold store and a room where women workers hand-pleat the filling inside the rolled flour dough. The space is clean to the bone, insulated from the din and dust outside.
Momos Pro was set up two years back with an investment of ₹2.5 crore to cater to the booming demand for momos. As a business-to-business (B2B) wholesaler, it supplies fresh and frozen momos to more than 50 clients which include quick-service restaurants (QSR) and hotels in a 250-km radius. The daily volumes hover between 15,000 to 20,000 pieces, depending on demand.
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“There is no dearth of demand. The problem is everyone wants it dirt cheap,” Panwar said with a chuckle. Those who supply to kiosks in metro stations do not want to pay more than ₹2-3 per piece. “You cannot maintain quality at those prices. The ones we make are sold to clients for ₹5-7 per piece, depending on the filling.”
Panwar added that a low entry barrier to the business, coupled with soaring demand, has made it a cottage industry of sorts. Just about anyone, with a capital of less than ₹1 lakh, can become a supplier. That means no check on quality; unorganized businesses can use everything from rotting vegetables and sub-par flour to poultry waste and cheap cottage cheese made with vegetable oils.
“You cannot really trust road-side momos sold by small vendors,” Panwar warned.
According to him, around 70 B2B manufacturers supply to outlets in the national capital region. Some use automated processes where imported Chinese and Japanese machines do the filling and pleating.
Cottage to QSR
Over the past decade and a half, momos have emerged as a top street food in India with a rapidly growing footprint. Till the late-90s, this delicacy was only served in a handful of eateries run by Tibetan refugees and migrants from Nepal for whom it is part of the staple diet. As a migrant workforce in search of opportunities carried the taste of their home kitchen to faraway cities, momos captured the street food space around 2010. The sight of fresh and steaming dumplings which can instantly gratify one’s hunger and is not deep fried (therefore, healthier), added to its mass appeal.
For street side vendors, the business requires very little capital investment—more so, when there is a cottage industry in place, like in the National Capital Region, to do daily grind. A vendor selling a modest 100 plates for a few hours in the evening can easily make ₹1,000 a day. For popular ones, a day’s earnings run into thousands.
This growing popularity prompted formal players to enter the space, promising better quality and hygiene, and offering customers a wider choice. For instance, the quick service restaurant (QSR) chain Wow Momo, which began its journey from Kolkata in 2009, currently sells over 1.2 million pieces a day across 450 stores, including frozen ones via quick commerce and retail outlets. Customers can choose from 14 variants which are served steamed, pan-fried, or tossed in different sauces. Interestingly, the southern state of Tamil Nadu hosts the second largest number of Wow Momo outlets (numbering over 100) after its eastern hub of West Bengal.
In FY25, the Tiger Global-backed startup’s revenue is expected to cross ₹630 crore. The company is now exporting to the Gulf countries and plans to open international outlets by FY26. Besides, it is aiming to go public by mid-2027. In the last funding round in early 2024, Wow Momo was valued at ₹2,500 crore.
The market for momos, nonetheless, is largely unorganized, with over 90% catered to by small kiosks and roadside vendors. Estimates by food industry insiders Mint spoke to peg the market at more than ₹30,000 crore annually.
Similarly, Prasuma, which started as a maker of cold cuts in the 80s, was the first to launch frozen momos in 2019, and currently sells about 100 million pieces a year. Earlier this month, the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) major ITC acquired 43.8% stake in Prasuma and said it will fully acquire the company in the next three years.
The market for momos, nonetheless, is largely unorganized, with over 90% catered to by small kiosks and roadside vendors. Estimates by food industry insiders Mint spoke to peg the market at more than ₹30,000 crore annually.
“Just the organized market (which include B2B, QSR, frozen-FMCG and restaurants with a food safety license) is currently around ₹3,000 crore. The informal side is at least 10-times the size of organized,” said Sagar Daryani, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Wow Momo.
There is little doubt that momos have trumped other street food choices, going by its pan-India footprint. As the CEO of Prasuma Lisa Suwal puts it: “Delhi has its chole bhature and Mumbai has its vada pav, but momos are everywhere.”
Dough-as-a-vehicle
How did momos become so wildly popular?
In some form or other, dumplings have been a part of different cuisines, be it the gyoza in Japan or pierogi in Poland, said Kurush F. Dalal, a Mumbai-based culinary anthropologist. Historically, dumplings travelled with Mongols from Central Asia to wherever they went. In India, they were brought by Tibetan refugees and were consumed for decades in Himalayan states and the north-east region.
“Traditionally, the filling used to be pork, mutton, or beef…a blend of fatty meat (which releases the umami flavour as the fat melts), ginger and onions. The steaming was done with bone broth. And when the dumplings turned cold, you just pan fried it,” Dalal said.
Momos are among the cheapest sources of protein with a fiery chutney to drown the nothingness, when it comes to the taste, of chicken flesh.
—Kurush F. Dalal
The real revolution happened about 15 years back when momos left its Himalayan hub and pockets in northern India and exploded all over the country. Dalal, however, discounts the quality apprehensions when it comes to road-side stalls. According to him, it generates the maximum value out of poultry meat by using parts like the chicken skin and bishop’s nose (fancy name for butt) which are delicacies in countries like China and Japan but would otherwise go waste in India.
“Momos are among the cheapest sources of protein with a fiery chutney to drown the nothingness, when it comes to the taste, of chicken flesh. The other reason behind its popularity is that one can endlessly experiment with the filling. The dough is just a vehicle,” Dalal added.
The chocolate, tandoori and kurkure momos are already out there, but soon, your neighborhood vendor may serve a dry-fruit-mawa (almonds and cashews in whole dry milk—Dalal tasted a batch made by a friend and quite liked it), a Chettinad chicken, or a gongura (a popular Andhra pickle) chicken variant.
Twelve-pleat wonder
At Wow Momo’s manufacturing and R&D facility in Okhla, Delhi, head chef Rajashekar Saladi explained that the brand took meticulous care to ensure that the dough sheet is not thicker than 0.7 mm, to ensure palatability and the desired mouth-feel. The brand is working on gluten and wheat-free momos where the dough-sheet will be protein-based instead of refined flour.
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Wow Momo currently has four manufacturing facilities and is set to open its largest plant in Taloja, Maharashtra, with a production capacity of 1.5 million pieces a day.
Though most of its processes are automated, Wow Momo still employs skilled workers, to preserve the traditional craftsmanship. It’s a sight to watch—nimble fingers work at an astonishing speed, hand-filling a piece with 10-12 pleats of rolled dough, in less than six seconds. Imported machines can do only 7 pleats but make double the number of dumplings in an hour, compared to what a worker can manage in an eight-hour shift.
Sagar Daryani, co-founder of Wow Momo, said that the idea of a QSR chain was born when he was a college student in Kolkata. A lady would come and sell momos outside his college and fellow students just loved it.
“We began with an investment of ₹30,000 and opened our first outlet in a shop-inside-shop format in 2009. Our goal is to convert India into a momo-loving nation like how Domino’s did it with pizzas. We are not competing with roadside vendors but international brands like KFC and Domino’s,” Daryani said.
Daryani added that Wow Momo is now popular in the unlikeliest of places, from Malda in West Bengal and Gaya in Bihar to Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu and Kochi in Kerala. “We are aiming to build it as a global brand and exploring the physical store options in Nepal, Thailand, Canada, North America and European markets.”
The company, which has been growing at 30-35% in recent years, is targeting a four-fold increase in revenues ( ₹2,500 crore) by FY30. So far, it has expanded with QSR brands like Wow Chicken and Wow China, in addition to ready-to-eat instant cup noodles of the Tibetan thukpa and the Thai khow Suey.
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Unlike Wow Momo, the Gurugram-headquartered Prasuma, charted a different growth path. It started as a family business in 1985 selling cold cuts and sausages. In 2019, Prasuma launched India’s first frozen momo, which are preservative-free and can be prepared in less than five minutes. Call it the Maggi-fication (or instant noodle-like makeover) of the momo!
“When I was working in Mumbai, I would receive home-made frozen momos every month and my friends loved it. It took us a few years to perfect it as a product, to ensure they are as juicy, light and flavourful as freshly prepared ones. In the last few years, our frozen momo category registered 5x-growth by disrupting a market saturated with fried foods. Our momos are selling, to use a cliché, right from Kashmir (in north India) to Kanyakumari (in south),” said Lisa Suwal, CEO of Prasuma and Meatigo, which sells fresh meats and gourmet cheese.
Suwal added that its fully-automated processes ensure a consistent quality. To raise consumer acceptance of frozen food, the company launched Prasuma Momo Kitchen in 2022; it now runs 40 cloud kitchens in three cities. “We are exporting to the Middle-East and Maldives and will scale this to more destinations in coming years. The acquisition by ITC is a testimony to the future growth potential of the frozen food category.”
Kolkata’s Momo Queen
The perfect momo is a blend of three essential qualities—thin skin, the right ratio of meat to onions, and the right amount of moisture derived from fats. By those standards, most fail the test, contended chef Doma Wang, who is also known as the ‘Momo Queen of Kolkata’. A few years back, Wang visited Delhi and was disappointed by the ‘yucky’ variants dished out to customers.
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“Those made me want to throw up. The tandoori ones at Chanakyapuri were obnoxious. Those at Majnu Ka Tilla were thick-skinned,” Wang said over the phone. At 25, Wang took to making momos and thukpa as a home chef in early-1990s Calcutta. She and her man Friday (her sous-chef now) would deliver the food in a white Kinetic Honda. All this, because she had to raise a young daughter and put food on the table. Later, she was invited to run the canteen at the Sikkim state guest house in Middleton Street. As word spread, there would be long queues on most days.
Wang and her two daughters now run four outlets in the city. The popular Blue Poppy Thakali restaurant serves a staggering 600-800 plates of momos a day. At ₹300 per plate, the daily volumes can make even seasoned foodpreneurs envious.
But the visit to Delhi has scarred Wang. “At times, I feel I am quite done (after seeing her favourite food being assaulted on the streets), but I am open to set up a premium dining experience, not in Delhi, but in Mumbai or Bengaluru, if we find the right investors.”
For businesses like Wang’s the rising popularity of frozen momos is a likely risk. With machines replacing skilled workers, the Maggi-faction of momo threatens to outcompete finer handcrafted ones. For QSR startups and frozen food makers to keep growing, the challenge will be to wean customers away from cheaper road side vendors with the promise of better quality and hygiene. But for now, both formal and informal players appear to be riding a wave.
