A few current data points worth grounding this in: India’s creator economy is pegged at roughly USD 15.03 billion in 2026, growing at a 22.4% CAGR toward 2033, with independent individual creators holding an estimated 56.6% share, helped by affordable smartphones and cheap data. More specifically, micro creators in the 50K–500K follower range are described as the most undervalued segment in the creator-led D2C shift, and creator-led brands are converting 3–5x better than traditional D2C because trust is pre-built through content rather than bought through ad spend. Separately, tier-2 and tier-3 city creators are now reaching global audiences off the back of affordable internet and smartphones, and the industry is seeing more creators operate like formal businesses, with rising AI adoption.
“Tier-2/3 creators are India’s most undervalued growth lever — but most can’t produce commerce-ready content”
- Grounding the trend You’re seeing brand budgets shift toward creator-led content over traditional ad spend — what’s actually driving that on the ground?
Traditional media and media buying are very complicated processes and often gatekept. So the digital native brands were already looking for different ways to advertise and Meta and Google Ads were the answer.
However the standard boring brand led ads stopped working, people were simply not convinced anymore. The clear answer to this was in the form of creator led ads and content. It combined the aspect of a real person holding and talking about the product combined with a word of mouth recommendation. This dual nature and effect of creator-led content is what caused brand budgets to shift.
- How real is the tier-2/3 creator wave — is it changing who brands are actually working with, or still mostly a metro story? The access gap
I am not a fan of the term Tier 2/Tier 3 Creator that is being used by everyone. I prefer the term ‘Grassroots Creators’. This wave is the most real thing happening around us right now. Brands are actively searching for creators outside the metro areas, and their search has doubled within just a year. They now prefer to work with regional creators making content in Bengali, Marathi, Kannada over those who speak just in Hindi.
The reason for the brands preferring creators from smaller cities is however not about diversity, it’s just that it is cheaper for a higher level of engagement. Hence the need for frameworks to protect the interest of the creators.
- What’s the actual production gap for a creator outside a metro — is it equipment, know-how, or something else entirely?
A production gap exists for creators belonging to non-metros and it is not entirely about the equipment or the knowledge. It is slightly more complicated than that and eventually it ends up dictating the performance of the content. Sometimes a good phone and mic is all a creator needs to make content that catches attention.
But when it comes to the finishing, just a phone and a mic are not enough. Unless your content is made to go viral, you need consistency and familiarity. You need to follow a certain formula that your audience can look forward to when they see your face. A clean background, consistent lighting, crisp audio, catchy edits, engaging graphics within the video, subtitles, all of these need to be combined to create a final product that doesn’t miss the mark. You can attribute this production gap partially to lack of know-how and partially to equipment.
- What does “commerce-ready” content mean in practice, and why do so many creators fall short of it even with a big following?
In practice, “commerce-ready” content means digital assets like high-resolution images, videos that are optimized and formatted for different platforms, text descriptions. This type of content is instantly usable across various platforms like Meta, Whatsapp, Google Ads. A commerce asset can be adapted into multiple formats, run as ads, be displayed on a product page and represent the brand in a consistent way.
An organic post can be made once and then it will not have the same impact. To turn that organic content into something commerce-ready, consistency is important. The final result needs to look the same for all shots. The lighting cannot move, the background cannot change colour, the product needs to stay legible.
None of that matters to a follower. All of it matters to a performance marketer, because they need forty versions of the thing, not one. There are 2 to 2.5 million creators in India and 8-10% of them don’t earn anything. The reach is there. The reason the money is not is usually standing right behind them in the frame.
- Have you seen a creator or small brand hit a ceiling purely because their content couldn’t keep up with their audience growth?
Audience growth unlocks brand collaborations, and brand collaborations come with production and content demands. That is where the bottleneck or the ceiling lies.
People buy their first proper microphone or light after their first brand collab, not before. Most creators are not ready to deal or negotiate with a brand when it comes calling. Plus the market is very fickle, one stalled brand deal can really affect the future of the creators, because all brands talk. Being prepared and ready is very important for any and all creators in this day and age.
- Isn’t there a risk that pushing every creator toward polished, studio-grade content kills the raw authenticity that built their trust in the first place?
Polished content loses. Brands have measured it on many occasions. Creator footage beats studio-made brand films on click-through and on conversion, and the more it looks like an advertisement the worse it performs. Anyone pushing creators towards glossy is giving them bad advice.
The distinction people miss is between polish and control. Polish adds flair and superficial beauty. Control removes the accidents. A plain background and a light that behaves are not just polish, they take out the variables that were never part of the story.
When creators need to be ready to shoot at any time of the day, the dependence on external lights is introduced. When creators need to be heard clearly, the need for dedicated microphones arises. When ai bokeh filters no longer work and true depth of field is needed, the need for cameras arises.
Studio grade professional equipment doesn’t exist to add polish, but rather to be highly dependable and work flawlessly whenever you need it.
- Big platforms and AI tools are getting good at helping creators self-produce — doesn’t that shrink the need for someone like StudioBackdrops over time? Where it’s headed
Ai cannot replace production gear, the lights, the cameras, the backgrounds. Ai at best will stay merely as a software support tool that helps creators with planning and scheduling and editing their content.
And unless every content creator in the world suddenly wakes up and decides to sell their entire likeness to Imagegen AI tools, we are perfectly fine where we are. We will still keep trying to get Indian creators access to the best tools that they need at the best prices.
- With AI adoption rising among creators, what changes in the next 12–18 months about how content actually gets made?
The making gets faster but the admin does not.
Ninety per cent of Indian creators say they are interested in agentic tools, and almost all of them would use AI that learns their style. So assume the editing, the versioning, the resizing and the captions in four languages all collapse into something close to instant. One person will produce in a day what a small agency produced in a week.
So the next eighteen months is not about content getting better. It is about the gap widening between creators who operate like a business and creators who operate like a hobby with an audience. The tools are identical for both. The difference is entirely about how you implement them.
- If you had to bet on one shift in India’s creator economy over the next two years, what would it be?
Everyone quotes two and a half million creators in India. The number I see is that eight to ten per cent of them don’t earn anything at all. That gap is where the change happens in the next 2 years. Not more creators, but rather the existing creators making a livelihood out of it..
What it looks like on the ground is deeply unglamorous. Invoices. GST registration. A co-founder or an employee. Buying equipment as a business expense instead of as a treat. It is a different set of decisions from the ones that got them the audience.
So my bet is that in two years we stop calling it the creator economy and start calling them small businesses, because that is what they will be. Most of them will still be one person in a room. They will just be running it properly.
