Decoding the rise of creator economy in India

According to Statista, the global market for influencer marketing has grown eightfold in five years – from $1.7 billion in 2016 to nearly $14 billion in 2021. Anyone who is active on social media has probably noticed that the race to become an influencer has begun. The market will inevitably see a large influx of creators, and due to the growing crowd, the likelihood of creators becoming lost is greater than that of becoming noticed.

DIGIXX Summit & Awards 2022, the flagship event of Adgully for the Digital industry, saw a fireside chat on the topic ‘The Rise of Creator Economy in India’ on Day 1 of the event, wherein Ishan Jindal, Founder, Wobb engaged with Alok Kohli, Senior Director , Franchise, PepsiCo, in a scintillating conversation about the rising numbers of influencers, key factors acting as the catalyst and the economy around them.

Starting the conversation, Ishan Jindal noted, “If you see, creators and the economy around creators have largely developed and are still at their infancy right, with most of this accelerating post Covid. Post-Covid, we have seen a surge in the number of creators, because it’s free time for creators to talk about the passion, record that and put it out online. We have also seen a high rising number of people using social media, this is perhaps due to the penetration of smartphones in India and then followed by cheaper data, which means, more people can access the Internet, because people had more time to spend in their houses, so they were spending time on social media looking at products and doing online shopping, for the first time, then actually brick and mortar kind of disappeared for a while, so all of this has given a huge rise in creators, there are newer opportunities that are coming in, on a daily basis.”

The discussion then turned towards whether creators are actually driving meaningful value or are there other key enablers and how the industry can ensure that the creative economy rises.

Alok Kohli observed, “Lots of enablers almost came together to propel others. If you view it from a consumers’ point of view, who is consuming that content, I think, if you have an interest, you will find somebody speaking meaningful, and what that really means is an amazing level of engagement between both the creator and the consumer. That would enable almost countless possibilities and it would range from very basic.”

Kohli further noted, “Different businesses are using this entire ecosystem at different levels of the funnel – from awareness to engagement disposition to finally actually making a sale. That’s the entire spectrum and different brands are using it very effectively. PepsiCo did a tie-up with ‘Money Heist’ and we took out special cans, and we tied up with Yashraj Mukhate and he had a cool version of ‘Bella Ciao’. It drove an amazing amount of engagement.”

These are edited excerpts. For the complete conversation, please watch below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C337i9T31NA