Chennai, June 9 -- 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...