CHENNAI — In India, few foreign confections have been more eagerly embraced than chocolate — and no brand defines this affinity more than Cadbury.

“Cadbury is in our blood,” said Mr L. Nitin Chordia, who runs a small chocolate company, Kocoatrait, in Chennai with his wife, Ms Poonam. “It is a completely Indian product to us.”

First imported to the country by the British during colonisation, chocolate — most of it milk chocolate — is now a daily habit for one in five Indians, according to a 2019 report by Mintel, a market research company. And one brand, Cadbury, accounts for two-thirds of all sales, according to 2019 data from Nielsen.

Cadbury does particularly brisk business around Deepavali, the festival of lights celebrated across South Asia, when it has become popular to give chocolate instead of just mithai, traditional Indian sweets.

This brand loyalty endures even among members of the Indian diaspora, like Ms Rajani Konkipudi, 47, who grew up in Visakhapatnam, in Andhra Pradesh, and now lives in the Detroit area.

Her father used to bring back Cadbury fruit and nut bars — rich, silky smooth and studded with raisins and almonds — from work trips to Birmingham, England, where the company was founded.

In 2005, she visited Cadbury’s factory in Birmingham to make, as she called it, the “holy pilgrimage”.

A decade later, she is one of several smaller competitors seeking to challenge the dominance of Cadbury, and of milk chocolate in general, among Indians.

Ms Konkipudi’s business, Dwaar Chocolate, in East Township, Michigan, sells small-batch chocolate that is a far cry from her corporate rival’s. Her cacao beans come from family-run farms in Ecuador and India, and wind up in cardamom- and pistachio-speckled bars meant to mimic the taste of pistachio kulfi, or truffles inspired by paan, a crunchy, sharply flavored after-dinner snack in which she replaces betel nuts with cocoa nibs.

Her customer base is diverse, but she is focused on the Indian diaspora, hoping to inspire a greater appreciation for bitter, dark chocolate and an interest in supporting independent businesses like hers that oversee every step of the chocolate-making process, and produce their bars in small batches, using ethical practices.

In India and abroad, more Indians are getting into the chocolate business, hoping to capitalise on the treat’s popularity. Their biggest challenge isn’t financing or distribution but the enduring nostalgia throughout India and the diaspora for Cadbury.

Like mithai, a broad category of milk- and nut-based confections that are exchanged during any festivity — weddings, graduations and especially holidays like Deepavali — Cadbury’s prime offerings are very sweet and heavy on dairy, and often include nuts and fruits.

The company formalised this connection in 2003, introducing the slogan “Kuch meetha ho jaaye” (“Let’s have something sweet”) in Hindi. A year later, sales had grown tenfold.

“Overnight, people understood that chocolate could be something that was for a celebration; that really unlocked the way we told stories,” said Mr Anil Viswanathan, senior director of chocolate marketing for Mondelez India. (Mondelez International is Cadbury’s parent company; in the United States, the Hershey Co. has a licensing agreement to manufacture Cadbury’s chocolate, using a different recipe than that used overseas.)

Growing up in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, Ms Alak Vasa, who owns Elements Truffles in Union City, New Jersey, used to make frequent trips to the store with her grandfather to buy Cadbury chocolate.

She founded Elements in 2015 with her husband, Mr Kushal Choksi, seeking to emphasise the health benefits of dark chocolate and make sweets free of refined sugar.

But when Ms Vasa, 43, hosted an early tasting for friends and family in Ahmedabad, many said her dark chocolates were too bitter. Some were also surprised that a bar cost US$7 (S$9.45) — even though that price accounted for high-quality beans and fair compensation for farmworkers in Ecuador, where her beans are grown.

Ms Vasa discovered that the most successful way to woo this audience was to incorporate flavours familiar to Indians like rose and cardamom — essentially countering people’s fond memories of Cadbury with other tastes they loved.

Madhu Chocolate, started by Mr Elliott Curelop and Mr Harshit Gupta in 2018 in Austin, Texas, has adopted a similar strategy; its most popular offering is a masala chai dark-chocolate bar whose mild sweetness is tempered with heady ginger and clove.

“When we talk about masala chai, people are like, ‘This is how my mom makes chai,’ ” Mr Gupta said. Mr Curelop added, “You are going up against people’s emotions at the end.”

The wide consumption of dried fruits and nuts in India — and the cult popularity of Cadbury’s fruit and nut bar — informs Ms Zeinorin Stephen’s offerings at Hill Wild, a company she founded in 2017 with her husband, Mr Leiyolan Vashum, in Ukhrul, Manipur.

She channels those flavours by incorporating locally harvested sesame and perilla seeds, plum and wild apple in her bars.

In India, Hill Wild and Kocoatrait have been joined by a growing number of independent chocolate businesses, including Soklet and Mason & Co, that offer dark chocolate and heavily tout their sustainable-farming methods.

Recognising this rise in environmental consciousness — particularly among Generation Z, Mr Viswanathan said — Cadbury refocused its marketing starting in 2018 to emphasise its relationship with cocoa farmers and its efforts to raise their income and train them in sustainable cocoa cultivation.

Mr Chordia, of Kocoatrait, said Cadbury’s flavours are too ingrained in the Indian consciousness for any company to change those preferences completely.

Even Cadbury has struggled to get customers to branch out. In 2008, it introduced a dark-chocolate bar, Bournville, whose sales, Mr Viswanathan said, paled in comparison to its sweeter milk-chocolate counterparts.

Mr Chordia recalled an ill-fated attempt to give his older cousins in Mumbai a box of Kocoatrait’s dark chocolates last Deepavali.

“They were wondering why there is not enough sweetness in the chocolate,” he said. “If it is not sweet, you would never get any appreciation of the gift.”

He added: “Products that are sugary and creamy, that is what will always be the majority in India. You cannot undo the work of the last century.” THE NEW YORK TIMES