After K-Pop and K-Dramas for Indian brains, Korean foods dominate Indian taste buds

K-Food is finding a home in India

India’s love for Korean zeitgeist has gone beyond K-pop and K-dramas, spilling over to delectables. Food imports from Korea, like noodles, have seen an eight-fold jump in the last five years, according to a Moneycontrol analysis.

Indian imports of noodles, pasta and other delicacies from the East Asian nation stood at $12 million in FY24, rising from $1.5 million in FY20.

In the first five months of FY25, pasta imports from Korea reached $7.4 million, or 61 percent of the last fiscal's total imports of pasta-like items from Korea. South Korea’s share in India’s pasta imports was a meagre 0.8 percent a decade ago, but it increased to 8 percent in FY20 and 37 percent in FY24.

Between April-August 2024, 43.1 percent of India’s pasta imports came from Korea.

Love for pasta, noodles

India’s lust for pasta and noodles has increased remarkably in this period. While the country imported $18.5 million worth of products in FY20, shipments jumped to $32.3 million in FY24.

An earlier analysis by Moneycontrol had found that rising incomes and social media trends were contributing to higher imports of luxury or novelty items.

The country imported nearly 4 million kgs in the first six months of 2024, up from 140,600 kgs five years ago.

Fresh fruit imports like cranberries and dragon fruits were missing from India’s lexicon until 2015, but rose to 4.2 million kgs in first half of 2018 and surged six times to 25.9 million kgs since then.