Ahmedabad-based Toska chocolates is an artisanal chocolate brand that crafts luxurious bean-to-bar creations, transforming the finest cacao into bold, indulgent flavors. ‘Toska’ refers to a deep emotional longing or nostalgia. Vladimir Nabokov used the Russian word ‘Toska’ in his extensive scholarly commentary and translation of Alexander Pushkin’s classic 1833 masterpiece, Eugene Onegin.
According to founder Ishan Pansuria, this philosophy drives the brand’s decisions – from recipe development and sourcing to packaging design and customer experience. “While much of the craft chocolate industry focuses on flavor notes, cacao percentages, or origin stories, we focus on emotional experiences. Toska Chocolates is not a chocolate company that happens to tell stories; we are a storytelling company that uses chocolate as its medium.”
Toska’s products are designed to transport consumers into a memory, a place, or a feeling. A bar such as Baithak Masala Chai evokes the warmth of conversations over chai. Others draw inspiration from travel, seasons, and cultural experiences.
As the Indian craft chocolate market becomes sophisticated, differentiation is no longer achieved through premium ingredients alone, Pansuria said. Consumers look for authenticity, emotional connection, and memorable brand experiences. Toska occupies the space where fine chocolate meets culture, storytelling, and design.
When he started Toska, customers were just looking for premium chocolates. “The modern premium consumer is interested in provenance, ingredient integrity, craftsmanship, sustainability, and brand values. They want to understand where ingredients come from, how products are made, and why certain flavors exist.”
Toska’s branding speaks to this consumer through intentionality – Every visual element, flavor, packaging decision has a reason behind it. The brand avoids trend-driven marketing and instead focuses on creating a sense of permanence and timelessness.
“The premium consumer is not buying luxury solely for status. They are buying products that align with their identity and values. Toska appeals to consumers who appreciate craftsmanship, cultural narratives, design excellence, and sensory exploration.”
Learning curves
Speaking to Packaging South Asia, Pansuria talked about the learning curves while transitioning Toska from a startup idea into a scalable business. “The biggest challenge was realizing that scaling and craftsmanship are not mutually exclusive, but they require entirely different systems.
“When you’re small, quality depends largely on personal oversight. As you grow, quality must be built into processes, documentation, sourcing protocols, training systems, and supplier relationships.
The risk for any craft food business is that growth can dilute authenticity. We chose a slower and more disciplined growth path because protecting product integrity was more important than volume.”
Another learning was inventory and production planning, he said. Chocolate is sensitive to temperature, humidity, storage conditions, and ingredient variability. Scaling requires precision without losing creativity. “Today, our focus is scalable craftsmanship where systems support artisanal quality rather than replace it.”
Understanding cacao origins fundamentally changes how one views chocolate. “Most consumers have traditionally viewed chocolate as a confectionery product. However, cacao is an agricultural ingredient, much like coffee, tea, or wine grapes. The terroir, genetics, fermentation methods, drying practices, and post-harvest handling influence flavor. Our role is to bridge the gap between producer and consumer.”
Through storytelling, packaging, social media, and customer interactions, Toska educates consumers about how origin affects flavor. The brand encourages people to appreciate chocolate not merely in terms of sweetness but in terms of complexity, aroma, acidity, fruitiness, floral characteristics, nuttiness, and texture.
As India’s appreciation for specialty foods grows, they believe consumer education is essential for the long-term development of the craft chocolate industry, he said.
Leveraging digital platforms
Pansuria said digital platforms have become Toska’s primary storytelling channels, helping it to build a community and retain loyal customers.
“Community building is less about broadcasting messages and more about creating meaningful conversations. Instagram allows us to communicate visually and emotionally. We use it to showcase products and share the inspiration behind each creation, our design philosophy, ingredient journeys, and behind-the-scenes craftsmanship. Our website serves as an educational and experiential platform rather than simply an eCommerce destination.”
Customer feedback frequently influences future product development, flavor exploration, and packaging refinements.
‘Artisanal’ and hand-crafted integrity
Identifying which processes should scale and which should remain protected plays a big role in balancing the pressure of scaling production while strictly maintaining the artisinal integrity of Toska.
While consistency, quality control, inventory management, and logistics can be systemized; creativity, recipe development, flavor balancing, and sensory evaluation cannot be fully automated, he added.
“At Toska, every product continues to undergo rigorous tasting and quality assessment. Scaling should never mean standardization at the cost of character. Our goal is to preserve the soul of artisanal chocolate while improving operational efficiency.”
Experiential packaging
Pansuria approaches packaging as the first chapter of the experience. “The moment a consumer picks up a Toska bar, we want them to feel curiosity, sophistication, and anticipation. The typography, illustrations, textures, colors, and finishing details are selected to create an emotional response. Each package serves as a visual interpretation of the story inside.
“We design our packaging to feel gift-worthy even when someone is purchasing it for themselves. In many cases, customers encounter the packaging before they encounter the chocolate, so it is a critical part of shaping expectations. Consumers should feel they are holding an experience.”
Good packaging, he said, should perform three roles simultaneously – protection, communication, and experience. Chocolate is sensitive to environmental conditions and so structural integrity and product protection are non-negotiable.
Every packaging decision, he said, is evaluated from both aesthetic and logistical perspectives. “We test how materials behave during transportation, storage, and handling before evaluating their visual appeal.
Sustainability is integrated into this process by prioritizing recyclable and responsible materials wherever feasible, while ensuring they continue to meet performance requirements.”
Pansuria said the packaging design should reflect the flavors and the origin of the ingredients inside. Taking packaging as visual flavor translation, each flavor profile contains a distinct emotional and sensory character. The challenge is to express those characteristics through visual language.
Rather than illustrating ingredients literally, they aim to capture the feeling associated with them, he said. This creates a richer and more immersive customer experience. The packaging, thus, becomes an extension of the flavor narrative.
For example, a flavor inspired by warmth and nostalgia may use softer visual elements and inviting color palettes, and a fruit-forward chocolate may employ brighter tones and dynamic compositions.
According to Pansuria, color psychology plays a significant role in packaging. While warm tones often communicate comfort, spice, and richness, vibrant colors can suggest fruitiness and brightness, and deeper hues can indicate complexity, intensity, or indulgence.
Beyond color, the use of typography, illustration styles, spacing, and tactile finishes creates sensory expectations before consumption. “Research shows consumers begin forming flavor expectations within seconds of seeing packaging. We consciously use design to create alignment between visual perception and actual tasting experience.”
The packaging process
“The role of design is not decoration; it is interpretation. We begin every project with the story, not the design. Before discussing colors, layouts, or illustrations, we define the emotional objective. What memory are we trying to evoke? What feeling should remain with the consumer? Once that narrative foundation is established, designers translate the story into visual form,” Pansuria said.
Every creative decision is evaluated against a simple question: Does this feel unmistakably Toska? If the design is beautiful but disconnected from the narrative, it doesn’t move forward.
This unique, luxury-level packaging has impacted gifting and word-of-mouth marketing in a big way for Toska chocolates. Premium packaging significantly amplifies shareability and gifting behavior, Pansuria said, noting consumers seek gifts that feel thoughtful, personal, and memorable. And so packaging becomes an important part of that perceived value.
“Packaging acts as a silent brand ambassador. In today’s experience-driven economy, packaging has become one of the most powerful forms of marketing. Luxury packaging naturally encourages social sharing. When people photograph, gift, or display a product, they extend the brand’s reach organically.”
Future of luxury packaging
Historically, sustainability and premium aesthetics were often perceived as opposing goals, Pansuria said, adding advances in material science are making it possible to achieve both.
Consumers expect brands to demonstrate environmental responsibility, but also expect premium experiences. The challenge is not choosing between sustainability and luxury. The challenge is designing solutions where sustainability itself becomes a hallmark of luxury. “Our approach focuses on reducing unnecessary material usage, selecting responsible substrates, improving recyclability, and continuously evaluating new packaging innovations.”
The brands that create packaging that is beautiful, functional, emotionally engaging, and environmentally responsible will succeed, he concluded.
