By Srinath Sridharan, Corporate advisor & independent director on corporate boards
It’s no longer shocking — or even unusual — to see perfect strangers dancing, lip-syncing, or delivering monologues in the middle of public spaces, while someone else records with intent and precision. Much has been written about the promise of India’s creator economy and its glittering potential. But let’s not ignore the harder truth: we are a nation of young people who will need lasting financial security, real careers, and a future that outlives viral trends.
Across India, a cultural pivot is underway — visible in the millions of GenZ youth choosing the creator economy as their principal ambition. Armed with smartphones, self-certified aesthetic intuition, and fuelled by platforms that promise global reach at the tap of a filter, they are abandoning traditional career pathways in favour of an identity economy shaped by attention, relatability, and social capital.
Influence is democratised. Gatekeepers are vanishing. Anyone can now aspire not just to be upwardly mobile, but to be visible, adored, and monetised. It is a story of creative empowerment told in pixels. And yet, beneath the glow lies a fragile, untested architecture built on precarious incentives and shifting sands.
The creator economy, despite structural concerns, has emerged as a dynamic force reshaping India’s digital landscape. For the first time in history, individuals from non-metropolitan and non-English background are finding pathways to influence and income that were once gated by geography, pedigree, or privilege. Platforms like YouTube, Moj, and Instagram have allowed millions to monetise knowledge, humour, craft, and commentary — transforming passive consumption into active creation.
As policy response, India is now witnessing the early institutionalisation of the creator ecosystem — through new funds, incubators, and emerging ed-tech efforts like the proposed Indian Institute of Creative Technologies. Platforms are diversifying monetisation layers — ads, brand deals, subscriptions, affiliate marketing, tipping mechanisms, digital goods — offering creators multiple avenues to generate income beyond simple follower counts. As broadband access deepens and newer technologies such as artificial intelligence and augmented reality/virtual reality become more accessible, the creator economy could become a powerful vector for India’s soft power, innovation, and inclusive economic participation. The challenge, however, is to ensure the promise of this new economy does not mask its inequities — or become a stand-in for the hard but necessary work of structural livelihood creation.
Much like the ecosystem of Bollywood or any other individual talent-based industries, the top five-10 creators would command nearly 80% of the revenue. The niggling worry is the premature canonisation of the creator economy as a structural alternative to employment, enterprise, or education. A few charismatic outliers do manage to convert content into capital, building empires from kitchens and laptops. But for every one such story, there are thousands who oscillate between underpayment, burnout, and algorithmic obscurity.
India’s formal sector’s job creation remains anaemic, and the appeal of the creator economy is partly rooted in this vacuum. We are, in essence, asking the youngest citizens to navigate an economy of one — without safety nets or clarity on what long-term success looks like in a sector still maturing in fits and starts.
The metrics that govern this universe (likes, reach, impressions) are seductive but often uncorrelated with stable income. Meanwhile, most platforms that intermediate this attention economy are not beholden to Indian creators. They operate on global priorities, tweak discovery algorithms without notice, and optimise for platform-level engagement rather than individual creator growth. This asymmetry is a structural liability, one that exposes our youth to external volatility while feeding them a myth of control.
A growing economy inevitably brings with it the need for sharper oversight. As influencers increasingly shape consumer choices, their sway over impressionable audiences, particularly children and young adults, raises red flags. The Advertising Standards Council of India’s recent Influencer Compliance Scorecard is telling: over two-thirds of India’s top 100 digital creators failed to adhere to even the most basic disclosure norms in their brand partnerships. This lack of transparency blurs the line between content and advertising, leaving audiences, especially vulnerable ones, exposed to disguised promotions, materialism, and unrealistic aspirations.
Beyond regulation, there are questions of sustainability that India cannot ignore. The promise of the creator economy — instant fame, brand deals, and a glamorous lifestyle — is seducing a generation into chasing algorithmic applause over real skill development or productive enterprise. For a young nation striving for economic mobility and long-term growth, this model is thin ice.
Youths are turning into content serfs, fuelling platform profits while chasing an unsustainable dream of individual digital fame. What is seldom discussed is the inner cost of sustaining outer relevance. For young creators, many of whom are still in their formative years of identity and self-worth, the price of digital fame is frequently paid in anxiety, fatigue, and chronic self-surveillance. Even when controversy is avoided, most creators find that their growth will eventually stagnate — not due to a decline in effort or talent, but because the algorithm begins to prioritise novelty over consistency.
To complicate matters, this economy’s growth is being evangelised without critical scrutiny by policy influencers, tech platforms, and a growing cottage industry of digital mentorships that promise stardom with no mention of survivability.
A sustainable economy must be rooted in more than visibility. It must distribute dignity, stability, and progression. For that, we still need an educational foundation that equips our youth with diverse skills. The creator economy, if responsibly framed, could be one such pathway, but it cannot be the scaffolding on which we place the future of an old civilisation, and a potential global superpower.
What happens when a nation of 140 crore people begins to forsake structure for digital spectators? When its most energetic demographic starts ghosting formal education and deserting day jobs in pursuit of algorithmic validation? What becomes of an economy when virality supersedes viability, when the path to prosperity is charted through reels, not rigour, and aspiration is unmoored from industry?
A civilisation must find its strength in purpose, not just in popularity. And that brings us to the deeper concern. Can a generation survive on the hope that a viral moment might translate into monetary security? Or are we, in celebrating this shift uncritically, presiding over a 21st-century “let them eat cake” moment — encouraging the young Indians to chase clicks and likes as a proxy for livelihood?
