Turning likes to livelihood – the promise of India’s digital creator economy

When older generations hear Gen Z and Gen Alpha reveal their ambitions of working in social media, images of endless doomscrolling and content bordering on public nuisance are conjured. Social media presents unique opportunities for self-employment. While several countries, including the USA and Brazil, have achieved high creator monetisation rates, India still lags due to perceptions of social media jobs, which continue to be seen as a form of entertainment rather than work.

Those who work in the industry are often treated as though they are not performing any work at all. However, the reality does not quite align with this belief. Empirical evidence shows that India has around 20-25 lakh active digital creators who are credited with already influencing more than $ 350 billion (approximately ₹29 lakh crore) in consumer spending every year.

Entertainment as enterprise:

In the world’s fastest-growing economy, where formal employment options are not expanding commensurately with population growth, these digital platforms are turning into lucrative opportunities to earn extra money. This rings particularly true for the country’s demographic dividend, which is structurally well-suited to take up professions requiring digital fluency: nearly two-thirds of the population is under 35, making much of India’s workforce belong to a generation that did not grow into the internet age, rather the internet age grew up with them.

Much of the scepticism surrounding content-creation jobs in the Indian context stems from a lack of familiarity with what they entail. According to the BCG report released during the WAVES 2025 Summit, “digital creators” are individuals with over 1,000 followers, while “monetised creators” are a subset of approximately 8-10 per cent of the former who earn platform and brand income. Beyond being “influencers”, a term which has now entered common rhetoric, enterprising young adults are using social media platforms to jumpstart small businesses, monetize cultural capital via meme pages, and transform digital visibility, often measured in terms of “virality”, into sustained revenue channels.

Digital opportunity:

In a time when job opportunities are scarce and qualification requirements for even fresher roles are high, content creation is a beacon of hope; with low barriers to entry, minimal capital investment, and a ‘qualifications required’ column that is scarce, barring the ownership of a phone. Content creation offers a unique opportunity to those willing to try their hand at it. India, with over 900 million internet subscribers according to IAMAI and KANTAR’s 2025 report, offers rewarding prospects for those who manage to capture digital attention. At present, the Indian creator economy generates about ₹1.6-2.9 lakh crore in direct revenue, a figure expected to balloon to ₹8.3-10.4 lakh crore by 2030.

The measurement gap:

While the numbers show that it holds potential, content creation has still not succeeded in capturing the imagination of most of the Indian population. This can largely be attributed to a vicious cycle wherein digital content creation jobs are perceived as unimportant and, therefore, no concerted effort is made to measure them in surveys. Consequently, their economic viability continues to go unnoticed. Somewhat promisingly, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) recognised “Social Media Influencers” as a professional category (code 1602) in the ITR-5 rule for the Assessment year 2025-26. Less encouragingly, the Periodic Labour Force Survey has yet to allocate a dedicated category for jobs in digital content creation. With creators relegated to broader occupational groups, such as arts and entertainment, advertising, information and communication, or self-employed services, they go unrecognized in the cornerstone of understanding employment trends in India.

This naturally makes it difficult to recognise them as a distinct part of the workforce. And hovering over this economic scepticism like the ever-vigilant colony auntie when friends from the opposite gender drop by is the persistent problem of a lack of social legitimacy. Although the crème de la crème of the digital content creator industry is making figures that are comparable to, and in some cases even higher than, those in traditional salaried jobs, their work continues to be seen as risky, temporary, and dependent on sheer luck rather than skill and effort.

This fallacy persists in public sentiment because ill-considered online behaviour gains disproportionate visibility while the far more substantive work of content creators who focus on productive pursuits such as education goes largely unnoticed. Ask any student, and most will admit to having silently thanked a YouTube creator for a last-minute revision video the night before an exam.

The road ahead:

The bottom line is that the global labour market is evolving faster than the mindset that pervades Indian society. Until changes are made to properly reflect digital work in employment statistics and include content creation in policy discussions, the industry is likely to remain undervalued. It is vital to clearly define what digital jobs entail and establish adequate methods for measuring, regulating, and, when required, supporting them.

The absence of such measures can lead to two adverse outcomes: India’s labour force may underutilize the opportunities the digital market offers due to a lack of knowledge, OR the open-entry markets attract many hopeful entrants while only a small fraction ultimately secure substantial rewards, making labour protections all the more necessary for the majority who try their hand at the newest digital gold rush. Without policy action, uncertainty hangs over the industry like a modern-day sword of Damocles.

(The writers are research scholars, Department of Economics, School of Social Sciences-ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education-Deemed to be University)