As Cadbury Choclairs turns 50 in India, we look back at its journey and evolution

• Cadbury Choclairs, one of the most popular chocolate candies from Mondelez recently celebrated its 50th year in India.
• We speak to Inderpreet Singh, Associate Director, Marketing (Beverages, Meals, Candies, and Gums), Mondelez India on the brand's journey, its evolution and how it has managed to stay relevant.

Cadbury Choclairs just turned 50 in India and talking to the brand about its journey made me take a trip down memory lane. For me, Choclairs, formerly known as Eclairs, always brings back memories of my friends, birthdays and classrooms. The caramel-filled candy has been a part of our childhoods and still evokes nostalgia, which is probably why many of us still continue consuming the product.

As the product hits a milestone, we decided to understand the brand’s growth in India, where it stands now and how it has managed to stay relevant when consumer tastes and preferences are changing rapidly.

“Cadbury Choclairs is a product that has been close to our hearts. Many of us have grown up with the brand and we are proud to have created the category in India. Over the years, we have listened to a lot of feedback from our consumers and have worked on making the product better and better. We have tried to stay true to what we had created with Eclairs,” explained Inderpreet Singh, Associate Director, Marketing (Beverages, Meals, Candies, and Gums), Mondelez India.

As a part of its golden jubilee celebration in India, Mondelez has launched limited-edition packs where consumers can win a ‘Golden Ticket’ that will grant them access to Cadbury’s Chocolates Factory. The aim is to take people behind the scenes and show them how the chocolates are made, to share a bit of the legacy with them.

To get people excited about its 50th birthday, the brand has also launched an influencer marketing campaign with prominent faces like Mithila Palkar, Jamie Lever and Aparshakti Khurana. The activation will see 50 people win the Golden Ticket to the chocolate factory.




It was in 2013 that the name of the brand was changed from Eclairs to Choclairs, to stay consistent with the global name of the candy, it was only in India that the product was called Eclairs. While changing the name of a well-established product can be tricky, the transition did not do any harm to the brand, which is still popular across age groups.

While for a long time the brand was a favorite birthday treat for children, over the years, the brand has been able to cross over and become a part of its consumer’s everyday life. “Luckily for us, our current consumers and consumption of Choclairs is not skewed to any one occasion, it is quite large and widespread, which is expected of a brand that has been around for 50 years now. Today, Choclaires has got ingrained in people’s everyday life as opposed to specific occasions,” he shared. This is perhaps what also made sure that Covid did not have a huge impact on its demand. “We have both in-home consumers, in terms of people who buy a lot of these candies on an everyday basis or consumers who buy the product at a certain frequency for themselves or for their family around occasions. So while we did feel some impact due to Covid, overall, we managed well because the consumption was not skewed to one or the other time,” added Singh. Covid also made people gravitate towards brands they have consumed and trusted for years, which also helped the brand during these uncertain 1.5 years.

On how it has managed to stay relevant over the years, Singh said, “We have worked on a few different streams to ensure relevance. Firstly, over the years we listened to our consumer feedback. If they told us it was too sticky, or chewy or sweet, we tried to improve the product. That work has continued and we are still working on making the product even better. The other thing is innovation. We realized that the product itself was so well-loved, it was difficult to get another form of it going. But recently we have launched a coffee variant and consumers have been loving it.”

While the product has evolved over the years, the core thought of the candy giving small moments of joy to people has stayed consistent. Its target audience covers the entire spectrum, from children to young adults to even the elderly, which is why Choclairs has tried to build communications that appeal to all age groups.

“Since people across ages consume Choclairs, we have kept the thought of ‘Choto meetha’ or Small moments of joy consistent as opposed to a target group-specific. The depiction of some of our communications will be more adult whereas in some communications, especially when it comes to birthdays, it's more for the younger audience. So from that lens, it actually appeals to everyone, it appeals to the kid in all of us,” said Singh.