A plethora of empirical studies from Africa, Asia and Southeast Asia have shown that diversification to high value crops (HVC) is a win-win strategy in terms of its significant positive effects, inter alia, on income, employment, food and nutritional security and gender equality. Crop diversification also helps in environmental protection and adaptation to climate change; checks degradation of natural resources including soils and contributes towards attaining eight out of the seventeen sustainable development goals. It is, therefore, important to understand salient characteristics and performance of agricultural households diversifying to such crops to devise suitable strategies to promote crop diversification. This study, using data from situation assessment surveys of 2012-13 and 2018-19, brings out distinguishing characteristics of households diversifying to HVCs and compares their performance in terms of net returns, household income, and consumption expenditure, extent of income inequality and incidence of poverty with non-diversifiers.