India’s Dessert Index 2025: Scandalous Foods Maps How Mithai Is Evolving From Festive Ritual to Everyday Indulgence

•       The study maps how traditional mithai is being reimagined for younger audiences and how this shift is shaping the future of the dessert category.
•       The report also shows varied preferences across generations, with Baby Boomers remaining loyal to classic mithai.
•     Millennials prefer to balance traditional sweets with modern formats, while Gen Z chooses desserts that offer visual appeal and social currency.

 Scandalous Foods, the country’s fast-growing B2B innovator in frozen Indian sweets, has released India’s Dessert Index 2025, a cultural and strategic study mapping how Indians choose, consume, and perceive mithai today. With 684 respondents across age groups, regions, and social segments, the index shows a category deeply rooted in tradition but rapidly evolving as younger consumers drive visual appeal, shareability, and fusion formats into mainstream dessert culture. The study highlights a decisive shift from seasonal or prasad-led consumption to everyday indulgence, an area long dominated by ice creams and chocolates in India’s $30 billion dessert market.

The survey captures a measurable shift in perception, adoption, satisfaction, and wellness expectations, revealing how consumers expect a blend of traditional flavors with modern presentation and global dessert structures. Designed to make trends and traditions measurable, the index tracks perception, adoption curves, importance, satisfaction scores, and wellness sentiment across respondents, who include 57% women, 43% men, 50% Gen Z, 30% Millennials, and 20% Gen X. With the average Indian consuming 6.5 kilograms of sweets annually, the index aims to document how this cultural familiarity is transforming. India’s historic relationship with sweets, from temple laddus to festive halwas, continues to shape behavior, but modern aspiration is reshaping how mithai is presented, purchased, and enjoyed.

A key finding is the rise of visual-first consumption among the younger generation, who choose desserts that look premium, feel aspirational, and photograph well. While baby boomers remain the most loyal, sticking firmly to traditional sweets, millennials, who grew up with mithai and witnessed the rise of ice creams and cakes, prefer a blend of nostalgia and new-age influence. On the other hand, Gen Z openly consumes Western desserts in public and mithai at home, using desserts as social currency and visual expression. With fusion formats such as motichoor cakes, rasmalai cheesecakes, and rasgulla tiramisu continuing to attract attention, consumers increasingly prefer portion-sized indulgence that offers full flavor with better control instead of sugar-free compromises. These shifts signal mithai’s readiness to move into public, everyday spaces with the right formats and visibility.

The index also documents how restaurants and food brands are adapting through premium packaging, modern reinterpretations, and organized offerings such as new-age kulfis. Yet the report notes that fusion formats are only a transition point. The real opportunity lies in elevating classics like rasmalai, gulab jamun, and kalakand as hero products that stand out as pinnacle products rather than appearing only as components inside Western desserts. This trend, the index predicts, will define dessert innovation in 2026, as mithai becomes more aspirational, more visible, and more aligned with a generation that eats with its eyes first.

“Indian desserts are standing at a defining crossroads, heritage on one side and a visually driven generation on the other. What this study makes clear is that mithai is no longer competing only with flavor. It’s competing with attention, aspiration, and relevance in public spaces. As an industry, we now have the data to re-engineer classics without diluting identity. This is our opportunity to shape a modern mithai movement, one that doesn’t imitate global desserts but confidently stands shoulder to shoulder with them.”

Sanket S - Founder, Scandalous Foods

India’s Dessert Index 2025 opens an important conversation on how Indian sweets can reclaim relevance in a modern, everyday dessert landscape. Scandalous Foods aims to help the industry reimagine mithai as a contemporary, high-visibility category, one that stands tall in its own modern form and resonates with a generation redefining indulgence.