India native Suresh Chitturi still remembers the day he first ate at Church’s Chicken.

An MBA student at Emory University in Atlanta at the time, Mr. Chitturi wandered into the Buford Highway location for a meal.

When he tasted the southern-fried chicken, he immediately noticed a difference.

“Before I came to the U.S. in 1996, I knew only one fried chicken brand, which is KFC.  I discovered that there are brands that are much better and more suitable to what we like,” he told GlobalAtlanta by phone from India.

Mr. Chitturi is well acquainted with American chains looking to do business in India.  One of his former companies was vying to become a chicken supplier to both KFC and McDonald’s, and he was heavily involved in helping them understand the Indian consumer. 

In fact, it was a McDonald’s vice president that recommended Emory in the early 1990s, he said.

Ironically, that odyssey would lead him to the marinated, spicy variety of crispy chicken Church’s serves, which he says better suits Indian people’s natural “palate and taste profile.”

Now, 12 years after his first bite, Mr. Chitturi is helping bring that same experience from Atlanta-based Church’s—with a few cultural alterations—to his countrymen.

His company, SHL Foods Ltd., a poultry supplier and restaurant franchisee that operates Subway stores and distributes Mövenpick ice cream from Switzerland, will open Church’s Chicken’s first store in the world’s second most populous nation on Aug. 6.

The store will launch in Mr. Chitturi’s native Hyderabad, a rapidly growing city of 8 million people in the upper west corner of the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh. 

The state, home to a growing base of information technology, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, will be the beachhead for what the third-largest quick-service chicken chain’s leaders have described as a massive expansion plan in India.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Church’s president and CEO Harsha Agadi called India “the most lucrative market in the world” for the company and said it plans to open 300 stores there over the next decade.

“We’re excited about opening in India, I think this is only first step in what will be a very successful expansion in that part of the world,” said Kenneth Cutshaw, Church’s general counsel and executive vice president responsible for international development.

Mr. Chitturi’s company’s goals are ambitious but scaled down to its local realm of influence: 30 stores over the next five years. 

The state of Andhra Pradesh is a good place to start, especially with Mr. Chitturi’s company leading the way, Mr. Cutshaw said. 

Church’s market studies show that the state has the lowest percentage of vegetarians in India, a country more than a billion people where many forego all meats as a matter of religious preference, he said.

Although Church’s in India will make vegetarian meals in separate cookware to accommodate all types of customers, chicken remains the company’s defining product, and one that’s much less offensive as a protein source than beef and pork, which are considered unclean for some Hindus and Muslims. 

Mr. Chitturi said cultural preferences like this could pose challenges for companies that don’t have a broad range of international experience.

Church’s, which has 400 of its more than 1,800 total stores outside the U.S., doesn’t have that problem, especially with India.

Mr. Agadi, the president and CEO, was born in Mumbai.  Mr. Cutshaw started traveling to India 20 years ago while he was an official in the U.S. Commerce Department under the Reagan administration. 

In the years since, “I developed a strong affection for the country of India and have maintained that strong respect and admiration for where they were in 1987 and where they are now,” he said.

Mr. Cutshaw has served as the honorary consul for India in Atlanta since 2000.  He has worked extensively with the government and with Indian entrepreneurs.

Mr. Chitturi said it was refreshing to deal with someone who knows the Indian business landscape.  

“Because of Ken’s understanding of doing business with India, it was very easy for us to do a deal with Church’s.  With all others it takes very long for them to understand how to do it here,” Mr. Chitturi said.

The India expansion follows an international strategy Church’s launched some 30 years ago with store openings in Canada and Saudi Arabia. 

Church’s is legally called Cajun Operating Co. and was bought two years ago by Arcapita Inc., a Bahrain-based international investment and private equity firm that also has an Atlanta office.  The restaurant has locations in 19 countries including Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait and all across Latin America and the Caribbean.

The company recently announced aggressive strategies in Russia and the United Kingdom that will result in hundreds of new franchises over the next few years.

The first India restaurant will be called “Texas Chicken,” the name Church’s uses in markets outside the Americas to avoid negative connotations the word “church” might bring to mind in other parts of the world.  

Mr. Chitturi has returned to Atlanta seven or eight times since he graduated from Emory’s Goizueta Business School in 1998.

The city of Hyderabad has other ties with the state of Georgia.  The Georgia Institute of Technology has agreed to locate a 20-acre campus there, and the brand new international airport provides opportunities for collaboration with Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.