New Delhi [India], August 31: The evening chai break hasn’t moved an inch on the Indian calendar. What’s changed is what sits next to the cup. The mathri tin and the bhujia packet are increasingly sharing shelf space with roasted chickpeas, protein chips, and edamame, snacks that look and crunch like namkeen but are built around a very different promise: protein. This isn’t a passing fitness fad. It’s starting to look like a genuine rewrite of what “namkeen” means to Indian consumers.
The numbers make the case better than any brand pitch could. A healthy snacking report released this year, drawing on responses from over 6,000 Indian consumers across cities, age groups, and professions, found that close to nine in ten now factor protein into their snack choices. That’s a strikingly high number for a category that, until recently, was judged mostly on taste, price, and how well it paired with a cup of chai. India’s namkeen industry as a whole is projected to grow, at a double-digit annual rate, and a meaningful share of that growth is coming from the “better-for-you” end of the shelf, not the traditional one.
Why Now
A few forces are converging to make this the moment. Fitness culture has stopped being a niche interest and become a mainstream urban habit, gyms, running clubs, and home workouts have all created a generation of consumers who already track protein at meals and have started asking the same question of their snacks. Quick commerce has removed the old excuse of availability; a protein snack is now a 10-minute order away, as easy to reach for as a packet of chips. And there’s a quieter cultural shift too: people who grew up on namkeen aren’t looking to give it up. They’re looking for a version of it that does more for them, without asking them to change their habits.
Same Crunch, New Ingredients
What makes this trend genuinely interesting is that it isn’t asking Indians to abandon the format they already love, it’s rebuilding it from the inside. Brands are keeping the textures and rituals that made namkeen a staple, the crunch, the handful-at-a-time eating, the tea-time pairing, and re-engineering what’s inside the pack. Protein-forward snacks built on chickpea, lentil, and soy are on track to become a market worth close to $100 million by the end of the decade , still small next to traditional namkeen, but growing fast enough that legacy players are taking notice. Edamame, roasted rather than fried, is one of the ingredients leading this charge: naturally high in protein, familiar in texture to the roasted daals and peanuts already common in Indian snacking, and easy to season into flavours that feel local rather than imported.
PROMUNCH is one of the D2C brands building squarely around this shift, positioning itself as “India’s first protein namkeen.” Its core product is roasted, not fried, edamame beans, roasted in olive oil with no palm oil and no maida, delivering close to 42g of protein per 100g. The line comes in flavours built for the Indian palate, including Masala Mania and Indori Chatka, alongside a Himalayan Rock Salt option for a cleaner taste. The brand pitches itself as a direct swap for the usual suspects in an Indian snack drawer, makhana, chips, and protein bars, for occasions that already exist in most people’s day: the post-workout refuel, the 3 pm desk slump, movie night, or a handful with the evening chai. It’s a straightforward bet: keep the format Indians already reach for, change what’s inside the pack.
The New Normal
What’s worth watching here isn’t just the growth numbers. It’s that protein snacking is moving out of the “diet food” bracket and into the everyday one, sitting in office drawers, tiffin boxes, and post-workout bags the way namkeen always has. If the current pace holds, the distinction between “protein snack” and “namkeen” may stop being a distinction at all. It’ll just be what people reach for at 4 pm.
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