Creator Economy India — The Complete Creator Economy Landscape

Creator Economy startups in India have raised around $2.5 Bn between 2018 and 2022. If you are an investor, founder, builder in the Creator Economy India, you’d find this useful.👇

23 min readJul 18, 2022

The creator economy today does more than just provide value to platforms. It helps foster a community, builds relationships between brands and consumers, and helps them target an audience that they were struggling to engage with. — Tamseel Hussain, Livemint.

To get an understanding of creator economy on a global scale, SignalFire has published the best content. Since it was published in 2020, many VCs, founders, and builders have quoted, retweeted, and shared it around. For context, here is the link to it: SignalFire’s Creator Economy Market Map.

But if you are building for the Creator Economy India, not all the trends and numbers sit well in the Indian Context. So I decided to dig deeper on the topic, via Internet, my own observation, and the insights gathered by talking to thousands of creators, and from the data/users of Blinkstore.

Who am I?

I am Rajat Dangi, currently building Blinkstore. Blinkstore is platform for creators to launch their own e-commerce business in India. And sell custom merchandise, print-on-demand products, NFTs, digital goods, and anything else. It takes less than a minute to launch a store and costs Rs. 0. While Blinkstore takes care of all the operations behind the store.

What is Creator Economy?
The total fund raised by the creator economy Startups
Categorising the creator economy startups in India
Number of startups in India in the creator economy space
How the creator economy startups have progressed, pivoted, and adapted over time
How big is the creator economy India?
What do creators in India need and want from the creator economy startups?
What’s the future of the creator economy India?
Where’s the money in the creator economy?
Conclusion — Creator Economy India

1. What is Creator Economy?

Many independent content producers, curators, and community builders are developing their own tech-enabled digital businesses that allow them to monetize their work.

As per reports, the creator economy in India is growing at a compound annual rate of 25%, catalyzed by flexible office hours, remote work and renewal of passion pursuits.

Before we dive deeper into “What is Creator Economy?”, let’s answer “Who is a Creator?”.

Who is a creator?

Anyone who creates some kind of digital content: photographs, digital art, videos, live stream, vlog, blog, niche community, educational content, niche content, etc. Or someone who utilises digital media to share and showcase his/her work from the physical world to the Internet.

It also includes people are who make physical products (DIY Craft) at any scale. And use social media to share their work to reach a wider audience.

Here’s an example of creator that many people who are building/investing in India’s creator economy might miss out on:

Meet Nafees Painter Indore, an artist who paints trucks in India. Who now has 6000+ followers on Facebook. Truck drivers from all over India visit his workshop near Indore (Madhya Pradesh) for getting their trucks painted.

Without knowing the term “Creator Economy” and without understanding the nitty gritty of how social media, online conversions, reach, and monetisation works, he is using Facebook to promote his creative business pretty well. And has an offline monetisation product with good demand. And Nafees is also a creator (in India).

We should not put the number of followers a criteria when discussing who is a creator. Because creator is the one who is creating content and products and using social media to become a content creator on the Internet. It has an intrinsic value. So are the people who are commenting and sharing their views on the content by creating content themselves are creators.

In 2020, the total number of social media users in India were at 448 Million.

Naval said on Twitter, “Eventually, everybody will be in the creator economy.”

By 2026, social media users in India would grow to ~650 Million.

At the current state of ~450 Million social media users. We’ve 80 million content creators in India (according to Kalaari Capital’s report). Which includes all the social media users creating content online. And this number will continue to grow as more and more people find use cases of social media to express themselves, show their creativity, to promote their business, and to monetise their skills and ideas.

Out of these, 150,000 in India are professional creators who command 5000 to 1M+ audience. — Data from Social Blade.

What is Creator Economy?

The millions of people creating content on the Internet and the billions of people consuming the content, present an economic opportunity. Big part of that opportunity is in The Attention Monetisation.

The popular, unique, and skilled content creators use the Internet to make money. They monetise their audience and skills through various methods. The keyword “Creator Economy” was coined by VCs to name this thesis.

The big creator economy thesis is a mix of many thesis and trends. One tailwind is the huge change in consumer behaviour globally. People like to buy products from the Internet and they prefer authenticity over advertisements. Which gave rise to the influencer marketing, making it a $10 billion+ industry in 2021.

Then came the video streamers, product reviewers, online educators, writers/bloggers, affiliate sellers, digital product sellers, merchandise sellers, and many more to establish new monetisation methods. While, the money in the influencer marketing was flowing directly to the creators. The platforms got a chance to facilitate alternative monetisation for creators and also command a percentage of that money.

The overall market of the creator economy is around $104 Billion globally. Which includes the discovery platforms, monetisation platforms, and creator tools.

2. The total funding raised by India’s creator economy Startups

In 2021 alone, $1.5 Billion was invested into India’s creator economy startups. Out of which, $1.2 Billion went into discovery platforms (to fill the void left by TikTok). And rest was invested in monetisation platforms and a few creator tools (that you can count on your fingers).

From 2018 to 2022, over $2.5 Billion has gone into India’s creator economy startups.

3. Categorising the creator economy startups in India

The broader categories in which we can put the platforms are: Discovery, Monetisation, and Tools.

Within these three broad categories, we’ve sub-categories. There’s possibility for players in each segment to grow horizontally into other categories or vertically into the same category. The behemoths in the creator economy like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok are growing both ways, vertically and horizontally to capture the depth and breadth of the entire market.

As you start making your product optimum for a wider audience, it looses touch with the niches who’ve very specific use cases. Thus, creating opportunities for new players to enter the game.

India’s Creator Economy Landscape

Please Zoom-in for better view 👇

Creator Economy India Market Map — India’s Creator Economy Landscape

In the above categorisation, I’ve not included platforms that are not available in India. Or platforms that are available but not widely used by India’s Creators. For example: Teespring, Redbubble, Fanjoy, Cloutjam, MOE, Karat Card, Tumblr, etc.

Some thoughts on TikTok:

I included TikTok in the above categorisation because it was once available in India. And it might make a comeback. I believe, if TikTok enters India again, it’s game-over for every homegrown short-video app. TikTok will also compete fiercely with YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels in India.

No short video platform other than YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels have the technological depth and prowess that Tiktok has built. India’s short video apps are decade behind them. Also, I will fiercely oppose the re-entry of TikTok in India (for many reasons).

Creator Monetisation Landscape:

Creator Economy India — Creator Monetisation Platforms in India

I’ve not included the platforms that help with Ads Revenue: YouTube Ads Monetisation, Google Ad Sense Monetisation, Facebook Vide Ads Monetisation, and any similar platforms in this. My personal view is that those are one of a kind platforms and their monetisation models are operational for decades without much competition.

Let’s one by one explore each of these 9 sub-categories:

1. Community Building

Small and mid-level creators needed a way to bring their super-fans closer to them. And also to nurture a solid following that consumes all their content, gives feedback on the content, and creates hype for them. For smaller communities, creators prefer WhatsApp, Telegram. For mid sized communities, Discord, Slack, and Now Luma (new product) are ideal.

For big and open communities, the likes of Reddit, Facebook Groups are the go to platforms.

There’s not much competition here. And these is a communication first community platforms. The gap which existed in these platforms was on the monetisation front and in organising these growing members. Which gave birth to paywalled community building platforms and paywalled content platforms. I’ve covered them separately.

When approaching ideas for community building, it is important to pick what’s the tent pole feature in it. In other words, what’s the one this this platform is going to be orchestrated around. For example:

Is it communication first? (competes with WhatsApp, Reddit, Slack, Discord)
Is it content first? (Competes Facebook Groups, Reddit)
Is it monetisation first? (this segment has space for latest platforms)
Is it optimised for paywalled content? (again entering a crowded space but has possibilities)
Is it a white labeled solution with many customisations? (this use case now has many platforms in it, but still early and has open spaces for sustainabel business building)

“Community building” is one of the an overused word by builders, founders, creators, and investors. In practise it is art + science, it is difficult, and it is not as much about the creators, as it is about the audience.

The audience resists jumping from platform to platform. Imagine that you are a huge fan of 10 big content creators and they all rely on 10 different platform for a closed/paid/freemium community. Their audience will resist joining all of them. This is the big problem here.

2. Affiliate / Creator Commerce + 3. Merchandise D2C Brands + 4. Selling Digital Products

Enabling creators to become creator-preneurs (micro-entrepreneurs).

Another sub-thesis in creator economy on creator-led live-commerce is best summarised by Rohan Malhotra of Good Capital:

“micro-influencers are more effective at building a targeted audience (growth), creating entertaining experiences (retention), building trust (higher value) and personalising messaging (conversion). Consumer social platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc.) cannot meaningfully monetise via advertising-financed models in India; this unlocks the opportunity for more deeply integrated transactional platforms. New internet users in India need an interactive seller-led experience to replicate the offline e-commerce experience this market is used to.”

Looking past the fluff, the brands are looking at creators as a user of their affiliate program. Creators have the freedom to choose from a list of brands, create content on it, and sell online to get a commission/profit-margin. But this doesn’t sit well with all kinds of creators. Which highlights the opportunity of enabling creators to build their own brands and sell products online.

HYPD operates in the space of creator-led commerce. Inspired from the success of Little Red Book from China. Where creators sell beauty products and fashion/apparels from other brands with their own profit margins on top of them. This is a lucrative segment and the audience do prefer to buy from creators instead of the D2C channels. This can also be a good strategy for all brands to reach new consumers. Or to simply stay on top of the consumer mind.

Creators have the reach and they can become owners of D2C brands themselves:

Another trend is creators starting their own D2C brands and/or merchandise.

Creators have the capacity to create and own brands at a scale of Bewakoof.com and The Souled Store (if we talk about apparels and accessories). The backend of these businesses is print-on-demand and by removing the barrier to entry on who can start a print-on-demand business, one can essentially create thousands of new million dollar brands run by creators.

There’s a vast catalog of products that can be printed and the number goes as high as 500 print-on-demand products. Not only apparels, accessories, home decor, and lifestyle products. With a robust supply chain or on-demand packaging customisation, creators can start their own electronics brands like BoAt and Hammer or their own undergarments brand like Bummer or DaMENSCH. They’d also save the money that these brands usually spend on influencer marketing.

Blinkstore is operating in this space. With an aim of expanding the tech horizontally to support sale of digital products, owned products, NFTs, and anything else, globally.

Creators selling Digital products and NFTs:

Other than physical products (outsourced or handmade), creators also sell digital products like E-books, Lightroom Presets, Video templates, Wordpress themes, Illustrations, Icon Packs, Videos, photos, etc.

NFTs are not in the mainstream yet. And I am not going to share my nuanced take on NFTs in this blog. But, the popular opinion on Twitter and in the VC world is that NFTs are going to be huge. Creators stand at the forefront of utilising NFTs for monetisation.

5. Crowdfunding / Tip Jar / Subscription

BuyMeACoffee, pre-dominantly used by developers saw a new opportunity among creators as their new users. YouTube, Twitter, LinkTree also jumped in on this opportunity.

The idea behind these platforms is that the super-fans want to support their fav creators. And micro-payments is already huge in China. This tip isn’t always for pure support. Many creators and platforms have found use-cases to incentivise the fans for tipping and subscribing.

There are all kinds of platforms existing in this space, new and old, super niche and super wide.

6. Paid Newsletters

The poster child of paid newsletters is Substack (now available in India). Substack launched a white-labeled solution to build Paid + Free newsletter within minutes and saw a good adoption.

Substack, based in San Francisco, was most recently valued at $650 million after closing a $65 million Series B round in March of last year led by earlier investor Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). It had earlier raised a $15.3 million Series A round led by a16z in 2019.

Number of paid subscribers on Substack from July 2018 to November 2021

Read: Is Substack really worth $650 Million? Its top ten publishers collectively bring in $7 million in annualized revenue (as of August 2021) from which SubStack charges 10% as platform fee/cut.

Further read: Substack, The highly hyped newsletter platform has ditched plans for a series C. As per the lastest reports, Substack they did $9 million in revenue. And that doesn’t justify the 72X valuation of $650 million.

Number of paid subscribers on Substack from July 2018 to November 2021

Because of Substack, Medium and Revve (Twitter) came up with competing offerings. While platforms like Ghost and ConvertKit exist. The democratising of news and building a newsletter platform are completely different pitches and vision. I think SubStack wins because of their unique positioning and storytelling. They always talk about independent news writers, researchers freely publishing their content behind a paywall, and about giving the writers a powerful tool.

The space has a lot of opportunities and can still sustain a few more million dollar revenue generating companies. Blogging still remains a huge part of the Internet and the market is way beyond Substack’s $9 million revenue.

7. Indie Marketplaces

Etsy is the oldest and most widely adopted platform by independent product manufacturers and sellers. It offers a simple to use marketplace for creators to sell their handmade products and more.

Along with that, we’ve Kreate, CraftsVilla, Amazon Karigar.

Without these platforms, creators take orders in DMs on Instagram, Twitter, and ship manually. There are a number of tools to do it with ease. Collect payment through UPI, take orders via Google forms or just by chatting, and ship using any courier or ShipRocket kind of aggregator that offer pickup and drop service.

But that doesn’t scale and doesn’t bring organic demand. Which forces the creators to try listing on the marketplaces. Only a small percentage of these creators make up the most amount of GMV for these platforms.

E-commerce store builders like Ecwid, Shopify, Wix, Woocommerce, etc. do eat up into this segment. But they do not solve for organic demand. So it comes down to personal choice of creators, whether they want complete white labeled solution and ownership or they want organic demand from the marketplace. And un-surprisingly, most creators choose both.

8. Paywalled community and paywalled/premium content

The OG platform in this space is Patreon.

The most widely adopted community platforms do not offer the creators with a way to build paywall within the community. Which opens the space for apps and platforms like CosmoFeed, CreatorStack (Backstage Army), OnlyFans, Mighty Network, Circle, etc.

There are platforms that have horizontally expanded into this, such as YouTube, Nojoto and Wattpad (for writers), and more.

These platforms, beyond a paywall, also help with the CRM around what level of access should be given to which community members. Enabling creators to launch a variety of paid tiers, regulate offerings, and reduce their efforts.

As mentioned earlier, the challenge for such platforms lies on convincing the consumers to entertain the same creator on one more platform. There’s resistance among the consumers to not only signup on new app, but to pay for a membership.

There are a variety of use cases that creators have come up with. It works best with the content that has urgency or inherent value or isn’t available anywhere else. For example, finance content creators talking about which stocks to buy/sell on a daily basis, teachers helping students with exam prep, adult content, etc. A new motivation among fans is to get close to the creator, be involved in the content creation/ideation process, and to talk to them one-on-one.

9. Creator Led Ed-tech

Disclosure: I taught a live course on Bitclass on “How to start your D2C merch brand in India” for a brief period of 6 weeks to experience this segment first hand as a creator.

This segment saw a spike in 2020 and 2021, when creators were looking for monetisations methods that can do two things: 1. Reduce their dependence on constantly going out for creating content and 2. Introduce a monetisation channel that is in their control and doesn’t depend on brands.

This spike was led for creators who used to host offline meetups, courses, and workshops. Later the offline teachers joined this segment, come online, and reach their existing students and gain new students.

The most talked about platform in this segment was Teachable. Teachable was launched in year 2013 and they mostly grew frugally and were doing well way before the pandemic induced surge in the creator led ed-tech. But their model influenced many startups in India to start on the same lines.

While Udemy and Skillshare were dominantly present in the market. The new startups in this segment brought the offline experience of live courses and workshops online. Not all Creators are tech savvy to setup payment collections, scheduling the workshops, and running ads to get audience. Those who can do it on their own usually resort to it for complete ownership. Rest of the creators saw a great opportunity with Tagmango, Qoohoo, Bitclass, Frontrow, Graphy, Unlu, etc.

This segment has now slowed down or corrected itself. Because of the multi-edged sword of consumers burnout from screen time, slowdown in ed-tech, and re-opening of schools/colleges. But has huge potential if done with integrity.

4. Number of startups in India in the creator economy space

I counted till 45, that can be seen in the mainstream with some creator base (as their users). The number of startups in India building in the creator economy space can be ~100. And if we guesstimate and take into account the startups that we should be most excited about (the ones that are in the making), then we can safely 10X it and put it at 1000.

Investors and VCs who are actively talking to creator economy startups would have a better number on this and they can comment on how many startups have approached them in the last 2 years.

New startups shouldn’t worry about the question “What if Facebook/Google/Amazon does it?”, not because it is a bad question. But because startups should be more afraid of a 1 to 5 person team building a product from their hostel room or while working a side-gig. They are the one who are more likely to break into your space and take away your userbase.

5. How the creator economy startups have progressed, pivoted, and adapted over time

We’ve first hand seen the progress and pivot in creator economy startups who were building marketplaces for creator-led courses pivoting to SaaS. Graphy by Unacademy is the best example for this. They went from Graphy, a website builder integrated with live courses setup to a SaaS platform for online teachers. They did this by acquiring Spayee. And completely replacing Graphy with Spayee.

Another example is Scenes by Avalon. They were building a Clubhouse like platform first. Then pivoted to a community building platform for creator (a Discord like offering). But they didn’t see enough traction in that space. And they now pivoted to a White-Labeled Discord like platform, selling only paid/premium SaaS to educators, ed-tech companies, and companies for employee training that can afford to pay their premium pricing.

Scenes by Avalon is now placed directly in competition with Circle, Tribe, Might, Slack, and Discord.

The underlying reasons for the pivot by Scenes and Graphy both are:

Creators are not educators. And can’t drive workshops/courses with consistency. And very few creators are willing to become educators full-time.
The moment they make their platforms premium, creators don’t want to pay. For the same reason that they do not want to become full-time educator. And paying a monthly or yearly subscription will tie them to a particular platform.

Another pivot story is FrontRow and Unlu, who started with celebrity courses and community. Later entering the space they was emptied by Graphy. But both these platforms still look optimised and suitable for only celebrity courses.

Bitclass is one platform that hasn’t done major pivot. Though they’ve tried a dozen different models to sell courses, workshops, and cohort based courses. Tweaking the pricing, creator incentives, upselling methods, and more.

Grow91 (by Pratilipi) which started as a marketplace for creator merch pivoted to a community building platform where creators can host courses/workshops along with selling their merchandise. It’d be interesting to see how this unfolds.

Trell and Roposo were quick to introducing live commerce and TikTok like feed. YourQuote went in the direction of monetising its writer base instead of enabling the writers to monetise their audience/content (another interesting direction).

These and many other pivots expose two things: Founders/Investors with not a decade-long deep conviction on the market segment + And eagerness to enter a horizontal market too soon.

There could be many factors beneath these decisions, driven by data, opportunity, user feedback, investor sentiment, the need to bring in quick revenue growth, etc.

Pivots are special, because they are a big deal and at the same time, perfectly normal.

6. How big is the creator economy India? (creator economy market size india)

There must be some method to measure what percentage of TAM needs to be invested into startups in that category to enable them to own more than 50% of that market.

For comparison, Zomato has raised $2.5 Billion over a decade (mostly within the last 4 years) and Swiggy has raised $3.6 Billion in lifetime. India’s total addressable Food Services market was at USD 65 Billion in 2019 and is further expected to grow at 9% per annum to USD 110 Billion by 2025. So almost $6 to $7 Billion has been invested so far into India’s Food Services Market. And these two players are dominating the category. The bigger picture is that the total food consumption in India stood at $605 Bn in 2020 and only 8%-9% of it is from restaurants, rest is home-cooked.

Method 1:

From our own estimates, we put the TAM of creator-led commerce (D2C and Merchandise) in India at a ball park number of $1.6 Billion (2022) ($1.2B for 2021, taking the yearly growth into account keeping it at $1.6B). And given that 77% of the total money that creators command comes from brand deals (influencer marketing), the India’s creator economy TAM can be put at $4.8 Billion (optimistically).

Method 2:

After discussing this with Praachi Goenka (from Accel Partners), we’ve reverse calculated the Creator Economy India TAM from the latest/widely-quoted number on the size influencer market.

The Indian influencer marketing industry is valued at Rs 900 crore, it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 25 per cent to reach Rs 2,200 crore by 2025 ($276M). Again, taking that this is 77% of the total creator economy. The final TAM can be put at $358M (by 2025).

I am open to calculating this number multiple times using different methods, here’s my Calendly.

7. What do creators in India need and want from the creator economy startups?

I asked this question to Manish Pandey in an event on Creator Economy India. And he said, “Creators want to be left alone”.

In an exercise on the journey of a creator with Mofid Ansari, we concluded that creators go through a broadly common journey and face many challenges in between. And companies that solve these challenges the right way will stand a great chance of winning the segment.

The journey looks like this:

A thought of creating/uploading content inspired from an event or person (challenges: intrinsic resistance, lack of inspiration, knowledge of the topic) → Creating content (challenges: tools/gadgets, knowledge of the tools) → Distributing the content (challenges: getting traction on content, figuring out what’s the right way to frame the content, algorithm, SEO) → Building audience/followers/subscribers (challenges: consistency in content creation, algorithms, picking trends, analytics, finding collaborations, spending on promotions) → Monetisation (challenges: picking the monetisation method, picking tech stack for it, collecting/managing money, finding agencies, landing gigs/brands) → Diversifying the content/monetisation channels (challenges: picking monetisation methods, picking platforms, credit, community) → Becoming celebrity creator (challenges: finding representation, finding opportunities, managing payments, finances)…

Some creators jump through these stages over weeks and months. And most need to spend considerable amount of time on each step to grow sustainably and maintain liquidity in their accounts.

Creators may need tools, apps, platforms on each stage for solving for those challenge and more. And they might figure out and go with a patchwork of multiple product and seek help of people in their network to bypass those challenges.

But broadly, that’s how the journey looks and there are gaps and opportunities here.

8. What’s the future of the creator economy India?

Manish Pandey in the same event, in presence of many notable investors and builders in India’s creator economy said that:

“It is Day 1 of the kinder garden for creator economy in India”. — Manish Pandey

Why do I value his opinions so much that not only I am including them in this article, but also echoing the same thoughts because he has seen the numbers and statistics of some of India’s big YouTubers first hand.

Other than the optimism of people who are closely working with the creators and building products in the creator economy, there are many tailwinds supporting the growth.

At least 200 Million+ people in India have used one of India’s home grown short video app. With Moj leading the segment. India also has the highest number of social media users and content creators in the world.

In 2020, there were ~637 Million smartphones in India. This is number is set to cross ~900 Million by 2026. Significant rise in the adoption of smartphones will contribute to rise in the consumers for content creators.

The biggest limiting factor for any industry in India is the buying power of Indians. The GDP per capita of India in 2019 was ~$2100 (Rs. 1,47,000 if we take $1=Rs. 70 from 2019) and it slipped to ~$1900 in 2020 (Rs. 1,36,000 if we take $1= Rs. 72 from 2020).

GDP per capita in India is expected to reach $1850 (Rs. 1,46,150 at $1=Rs. 789) by the end of 2022, according to Trading Economics global macro models and analysts expectations. In the long-term, the India GDP per capita is projected to trend around $1920 (Rs. 1,57,440 at $1=Rs. 82 (my guesstimate)) in 2023, according to our econometric models. — Trading Economics.

Assuming a 7% growth in the next 10 years and a population growth from 1.3 billion at present to 1.4 billion by 2030, the country would end the decade with a per capita GDP of around $3,800.

India is also unique in a way that the income distribution is extremely unequal. And we’d see most of the purchasing power concentrated in big cities.

It is hard to say that these estimates will come out true, many businessmen and optimists believe that India is doing great economically and there are tailwinds that will result into a powerful spending appetite for the Indians.

9. Where’s the money in the creator economy India?

I’m actively working in creator economy space for the last 3+ years (currently building Blinkstore). And there’s a long list of problems that creators face (& solutions stand to become million & billion dollar startups):

Some observations/opportunities in the creator economy 👇

🎥 Content creation:

The toughest/best part of a creator’s day to day is ideating, creating, and distributing content. Any tool solving/helping creators with content creation (camera gear, mic, lights), editing (Adobe), scheduling, etc. has demand. Established companies are already winning here. Gap exists in new content formats: Reels, Podcasts, AI generated content.

👥 Gaining audience:

Next big challenge is gaining followers and nurturing a fan base (community). Tools that help creators with analytics on their audience, competitor analysis, and in finding gaps in the content can win here. Tools that can suggest content, pick trends before they blow up, generate content/captions/tags, etc. can win here.

👩‍💻 Choosing platform:

Creators pick their primary content distribution platform based on their niche + content type (YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Substack/Medium/Blog, Spotify, TikTok). Any startup building another social media (content distribution platform) doesn’t stand any chance.

💬 Closed groups/community:

Creators use Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Luma, BuyMeACoffee, Patreon, OnlyFans, Reddit, Inc. etc. Any startup trying to bring creators on their app doesn’t stand to grow too big. Because there’s huge resistance in the consumers to signup on new apps. Creators too, prefer to not get tied up on platforms that are new.

💰 Audience monetisation:

Creators want to put most of their effort into great content (they enjoy it + the audience values it). And aim to optimise for quick money. Therefore, any platform saying “build your audience/community here and then monetise it by offering them something of value” will face resistance and might see a small user base. Cut the clutter, help creators get to the money ⚡️

Dozen startups in 🇮🇳 enabling monetisation for creators. Any move to force creators/audience to signup on a new app would find resistance. Unless there’s demand.

💸 Collecting Money:

Social media & payment gateways have built simple solutions for creators to easily collect money from fans/followers. YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Substack, Razorpay Pages, are great for micropayments. Any startup building bloated app for creators to onboard their audience just to collect payment in exchange of some value will find it difficult to crack.

🤩 New opportunities:

Only tech savvy creators would dabble into opportunities like NFTs. And this segment remains highly volatile. But an opportunity nonetheless.

🧐 Misc:

Helping creators with payroll (for their team), trip bookings, launching new initiatives, education (edtech for new/budding creators), hiring, PR, finding sponsorship, credit, investing in #startups, etc. are new/interesting and open opportunities.

10. Conclusion — Creator Economy India

Investors who’ve the experience of building products, startups, and scaling them to become robust companies in the real world can have an in-depth (realistic) views on any thesis. Other than them, the founders who are building products in a market segment get the exposure from the real world nuances within the space.

Anyone else is mostly an observer and holds a variety of opinions that can either underestimate or overestimate the opportunity that exists. It is hard to gauge the value of products/startups that are in the early stage in the creator economy of India. Any startup with a decade long commitment and investors with the ability to fund the growth and sustain them for a long period of time will enjoy the benefits later on. The way it happened in food tech, travel, e-commerce, and Fintech.

India is a unique market, copy-cat ideas do not work as it is in this market. Products, growth approach, problem solving approach, and everything else needs a street smart approach in India. People who are entering the segment for the buzzword will find it difficult to continue betting/trusting in building and investing in their portfolio. But people who are entering with a broad and deep understanding along with unique perspectives on how platforms/startups can scale, expand, and command dollars in the market will win in the long term. As of now, the long-tail of the creator economy is huge, the peak of it is powerful, and carefully building products with long term commitment will lead to victory in the creator economy.

Research / Further Reads: