As per Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report, 2-2.5 million creators in India are influencing more than 30% of consumers with around $350-400 billion in consumer spending.
Rising Creator influenced Spending in India: Report Highlights
- Supporting Infrastructure in India: E.g. Digital content watch time (in hours per week) increased from 6.6.(FY 2020) to 10.9 (FY 2024) with internet users increasing from ~740 Million (FY2020) to ~950 Million (FY2024).
- Demographic Expansion: Ecosystem is expanding beyond Gen Z and metropolitan centres, reaching varied age groups and city tiers.
- Leading Categories: Short-form video remains the dominant content format, with comedy, films, daily soaps, and fashion being the most consumed genres.
- Brand Spending: 70% of brands are expecting to increase their creator budgets by 1.5- 3 times over the next 2-3 years signaling a shift in marketing driven by digital creator ecosystem.
About Creator (or Orange) Economy
- Meaning: Ecosystem involving creators, platforms, brands, and third-party intermediaries who collaborate and generate revenue through content-driven models like advertising, sponsorships, subscriptions, commerce, etc.
- Creators, makes content like videos, posts for engaging audience, and bring authenticity, relatability and niche expertise.
- Significance
- Economic Growth: YouTube reported its creative ecosystem contributed over Rs 16,000 crore to India’s GDP in 2024.
- Jobs and Innovation: Provides livelihoods to influencers, editors, IT professionals, etc., through monetization opportunities in platforms like YouTube, Instagram, etc.
- Key Challenges: Inconsistent monetization opportunities, stringent platform algorithms, Intellectual property protection, trust and authenticity (fake followers, etc.).