India has more creators than ever before, yet brands and audiences have never been more selective about who they trust. As influencer marketing enters 2026, the industry is confronting a paradox. While creator supply continues to expand, tolerance for surface-level influence is rapidly shrinking.
From short-form video creators and podcasters to gamers, educators and regional storytellers, millions of Indians are now earning through digital content. For example, YouTube channel "Bandar Apna Dost" is world's most watched AI slop channel, crossing 2.7 million views. It is estimated to be earning Rs 38 crore ($4.25 million) a year.
Brands, too, are rapidly reallocating budgets from traditional advertising to influencer-led marketing, with AI creative content, making creators central to modern brand strategy.
However, as the industry scales, a fundamental gap is becoming harder to ignore. According to Manjul Wadhwa, Founder of Anagram Media Labs and Inflyx, a marketing company, the creator economy’s financial backbone has not kept pace with its growth. “India’s creator economy today is growing faster than the systems that support it. While content, audiences and brand spends have scaled rapidly, payments remain fragmented, informal and inefficient,” he said.
Wadhwa pointed out that despite digital advertising in India being projected to cross ₹50,000 crore in the coming years, creator payments continue to operate without structured financial rails. “In many ways, the creator economy today resembles India’s pre-formalised SME ecosystem. It is high on ambition and volume, but low on financial structure and transparency,” he added.
This lack of structure has tangible consequences on the ground. Creator payments often rely on personal UPI transfers, delayed bank settlements or informal arrangements routed through multiple intermediaries. “Even today, many creators receive payments weeks after a campaign is completed, with little clarity on deductions, timelines or documentation,” Wadhwa said, noting that this creates friction not just for creators, but also for brands and agencies managing compliance, reconciliation and tax reporting.
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The parallels with India’s MSME sector a decade ago are striking. Before fintech-led interventions transformed invoicing, lending and payments, small businesses largely depended on informal cash cycles. “The creator economy is at a similar inflection point,” Wadhwa said. “Just as fintech formalised SMEs, creators now need purpose-built financial infrastructure that recognises them as professionals, not side-hustlers.”
Industry estimates suggest India is home to over 80 million creators, with influencer marketing growing at over 25 percent CAGR. While brands are increasingly drawn to creators for authenticity and measurable engagement, operational inefficiencies continue to slow the ecosystem. Payments are frequently delayed due to manual reconciliation, split across platforms, and remain unstructured from a compliance and tax perspective.
“This inefficiency doesn’t just affect creators. It slows down brands, agencies and the overall ecosystem,” Wadhwa said, adding that as influencer marketing matures, financial opacity becomes a business risk rather than an inconvenience.
The shift was set in motion over the past two years. Between 2024 and 2025, organic engagement across platforms softened even as brand investments continued to rise. This imbalance forced marketers to reassess value, audiences to become more discerning, and creators to rethink how influence is built and sustained. Influence, once driven by reach and visibility, is now being evaluated on credibility, connection and outcomes.
“2025 marked a defining phase for the Indian creator economy, where the shift was clearly from scale to substance. Audiences have become far more discerning, and it’s now easy for them to differentiate between genuine creators who build communities and transactional celebrity endorsements. That change has fundamentally altered how influence is perceived and valued,” said Rohit Reddy, CEO and Founder of EiPi Media. According to him, the role of celebrity influence has also evolved. “Celebrities retained relevance, but increasingly as performance assets rather than organic distribution plays, while real credibility and community influence shifted toward smaller creators.”
That recalibration is expected to become more pronounced in 2026. “Looking ahead to 2026, we expect fewer but deeper celebrity partnerships, accelerated investment in niche community creators, a clearer separation between performance-led and trust-led influence, and a decisive move away from vanity metrics toward trust, retention, and conversion. Influence today is defined by credibility and connection and that shift is only strengthening,” Reddy added.
As accountability becomes central, formats are also changing. Ankush Vij, Co-Founder and VP Media at Hastagornage, pointed to “more advancement in measurability of influencer campaigns, creators led shoppable long-form videos, AI-personalized creator collabs,” noting that marketers must prepare for hyper-local, measurable formats that can be evaluated like any other media channel.
This evolution is closely tied to the growing convergence of content and commerce. “In 2026, expect three big shifts. First, formats will continue to move toward short-form plus commerce: performance-led creator content, affiliate-led storytelling, live shopping experiments, and more creator-as-a-channel planning,” said Sayak Mukherjee, Co-founder at Creatorcult. He added that while AI will significantly compress turnaround times across discovery, benchmarking and content iteration, authenticity will remain the key differentiator even as the ecosystem moves towards consolidation and institutionalisation.
Platforms are also reshaping their offerings to align with these changes. “As we look toward 2026, content, commerce and culture will increasingly be driven by a visual-first mindset,” said Saket Jha Saurabh, Director and Head of Content and AR Partnerships at Snap Inc. He noted that vertical formats and immersive layers like AR are becoming core engagement tools rather than experimental add-ons. “In this next phase, AR, interactive lenses and visual storytelling will sit at the centre of how creators and brands capture attention, deepen connection and create long-term value.”
Beyond formats and metrics, a deeper transformation is underway in how creators position themselves within the ecosystem. Creators are increasingly moving beyond brand partnerships to build their own intellectual property, communities and businesses. “In India, 2026 will be about turning influence into measurable business value,” said Rahat Khan, Co-Founder, Fame Keeda. “Brands have already shifted from surface metrics like views to outcomes that affect sales, loyalty, and community growth.” He added that creators are launching products, incubator programmes and niche ventures as new monetisation models take shape.
This maturation is also pushing the creator economy towards scale and institutional depth. “2026 is expected to be shaped by immersive and IP-led content formats, short-form video evolving into episodic storytelling, live commerce becoming mainstream, and creators launching owned communities,” said Avi Chanodia, Co-Founder, CREATE. He noted that creator-led platforms, talent management firms and martech-enabled influencer networks are increasingly positioning themselves for IPOs or strategic acquisitions.
As novelty gives way to credibility, authenticity is emerging as a non-negotiable. “2026 will be less about novelty and more about credibility,” said Zeba Madni and Supriya Ullengala, Co-Founders, Madhouse Media. While short-form video will continue to dominate, they said raw, POV-driven content and behind-the-scenes storytelling will hold attention longer than polished formats. AI will help scale workflows, but cultural understanding and trust will remain central.