New Delhi, August 19, 2026: Influencer marketing has become one of the fastest-growing line items in Indian D2C budgets, but most founders still pick creators by follower count and gut feel, with little visibility into whether that spend translates into real customers. KlugKlug, which has spent over four years building creator intelligence tools for some of India’s largest consumer brands, says this data gap is costing early-stage founders disproportionately and is launching a program to close it.
The Problem: Spending on Instinct
Founders often discover too late that the audience they paid to reach was inflated, irrelevant, or already oversaturated by competing brands in the same category. Enterprise brands have long had the analytics to catch this before it happens; most D2C startups have not.
KlugKlug currently tracks more than 11 million creators across Instagram and YouTube in India, including regional and vernacular voices in languages such as Kannada, Punjabi, Marathi and Tamil communities the company says are increasingly where new D2C brands find their most loyal early customers, but which remain largely invisible to standard influencer-discovery tools.
The Response: GETKLUG
Starting this month, KlugKlug is offering a limited cohort of 100 high-growth D2C brands one month of full platform access, along with three strategic audits valued at ₹20,000, at no cost. The audits cover:
- Whether past influencer campaigns actually drove results
- Which creators in a brand’s category have genuine, non-inflated audiences
- What competitors are doing differently in their creator strategy
- Where the unclaimed opportunities are in a brand’s category
Access is full platform access, not a limited trial, and audits are built around each brand’s specific data rather than a generic template.
Program details:
- Open to: D2C brands across all categories
- Cohort size: First 100 qualifying brands
- Deadline to apply: August 31, 2026
What Founders and Partners Are Saying
Kalyan Kumar, Co-Founder and CEO of KlugKlug, said the initiative grew out of repeated requests from early-stage founders: “Most D2C brands in India are spending their influencer budgets on instinct and optimism, and that’s a waste of precious founder and investor resources. We wanted to give early-stage founders the same quality of creator intelligence that the biggest companies in the country already have. This is a first step toward that.”
Endorsing the program, Gaurav Agarwal, Co-Founder, Tata 1mg said, “The D2C space in India is at an inflection point. Brands that figure out creator marketing early are the ones that scale fast, and those that don’t end up spending more to achieve less. What KlugKlug is doing with this program is removing the single biggest barrier for ambitious founders: access to the right intelligence at the right time. I have seen what data-backed creator decisions can do for a brand, and every D2C founder in India deserves that advantage.”
Also endorsing the initiative, Amit Jain, Co-Founder and CEO, CarDekho said, “Influencer marketing in India has a trust deficit, not between brands and creators, but between brands and their own data. Most founders I speak to have no real visibility into whether their creator spends are driving outcomes or just impressions. KlugKlug solves that, and offering it free for a month to D2C brands is exactly the kind of move the industry needs. If you are building a D2C brand and you are not using this, you are making decisions with your eyes closed.”
Shantanu, Co-Founder at Kapiva, says, “Kapiva has been with KlugKlug for almost three years, and what’s surprised us is just the many unique use cases we can use the platform for in the influencer space, some very strategic. We’ve trusted their data year after year. It’s not just a platform for us. It’s a brain that sits alongside us.”
About KlugKlug
KlugKlug is a creator intelligence platform used by consumer brands including Myntra, ITC, Godrej, Tata 1mg, Xiaomi, Ajio, Minimalist, Innovist, Blissclub, Kapiva and Firstcry. The platform tracks over 11 million creators across Instagram and YouTube in India, helping brands evaluate influencer authenticity, audience quality, and campaign return before and after they spend.
For queries, program details, or to apply for the Klug D2C Growth Program, brands can write in at [email protected]
