How influencer marketing in India is being rewritten for 2030

A decade ago, influencer marketing in India was largely transactional. Brands paid creators for posts, measured likes and views, and moved on to the next campaign. The industry was informal, largely unregulated, and driven by visibility rather than accountability.

By the early 2020s, that model had already begun to crack.

The creator economy exploded alongside cheap data, short-form video, and vernacular internet adoption. Influencers became full-time professionals. Agencies emerged as intermediaries. Platforms like Instagram, YouTube, ShareChat, Moj and later quick-commerce integrations turned influence into a structured media channel. According to multiple industry estimates, India today has over 4 million creators, making it one of the largest creator ecosystems globally.

Now, as the industry looks ahead to 2030, influencer marketing is undergoing a deeper structural shift. Reach is no longer scarce. Trust is. And the next phase of growth will be shaped not by algorithms alone, but by consumer behaviour, regional depth, private communities, and the uneasy overlap between creators, brands, and technology.

Globally, influencer marketing is projected to approach USD 100 billion by 2030, growing at an estimated 20–30% CAGR between 2025 and 2030. In India, the creator economy is expected to touch ₹500 billion by the end of the decade, driven by Tier II and III growth, vernacular consumption, and commerce-linked creator activity.

What was once considered experimental media spend is now embedded into brand strategy.

As Jigar Bagaria, Business and Marketing Head at Adintors, notes, the scale itself has forced institutionalisation. “As the creator economy matures, the role of platforms and agencies will quietly but decisively shift from amplifying visibility to standardising trust, authenticity, and sustainability.

Such sustained growth signals not just growth at scale, but also institutionalisation. Influencer marketing is not an experimental media spend but an embedded infrastructure within brand strategy.”  

Consumer behaviour has been central to this shift. Indian audiences are increasingly sceptical of overt advertising, but deeply responsive to familiar voices, regional language, and lived experience. Trust is no longer built through celebrity association alone, but through repetition, context, and perceived honesty.

That behavioural shift sets the stage for the next set of tensions the industry must resolve.

When creators become brand owners

The line between influencer and entrepreneur is increasingly blurred in India’s creator economy. Over the past few years, mainstream creators have begun turning audience trust into owned businesses, reshaping how brands think about partnerships.

Comedy creator Kusha Kapila launched shapewear brand UnderNeat, beauty creator Mrunal Panchal followed with Mrucha Beauty, while actor and digital creator Prajakta Koli built Merch Garage as a consumer-facing extension of her personal brand. Similar ventures across beauty, fashion and lifestyle indicate a broader shift: creators are no longer just amplifying products, they are building them.

This has prompted concerns around conflict.Shivashish Tarkas, Founder and CEO of The InterMentalist, believes that fear is misplaced. “There’s a common perception that when creators become brand owners, they automatically turn into competitors of the brands they collaborate with. I don’t think that’s entirely correct,” he says.

Tarkas points out that most creator-led ventures are still at an early stage. “It’s simply too soon to judge their success rate or put them in the same bracket as established brands. The brand partnerships creators do today are with companies that are already worth thousands of crores, have strong distribution, and hold real market share.” 

He adds that many creators actively avoid promoting brands from the same category as their own ventures, reducing real conflict. “As of today, most creator-owned FMCG or D2C ventures are not yet profitable. They are still in the scaling phase… putting creator-led startups and established brands under the same lens doesn’t make sense.”

Dhanush Rajendiran, Co-Founder of Kekumeku, breaks the issue down by scale. “This question feels intuitively large, but when you break it down, it’s actually quite small,” he says. India has roughly 4 million creators, but fewer than 1% have launched their own brands. “From a market-design perspective, there is no scarcity. Supply far outweighs any perceived conflict.”

He also draws a clear line between influence and execution. “Brand-building is a capability. Creators don’t magically acquire it by having an audience. What creators fundamentally own is trust and distribution within a niche. What brands own is product, operations, capital, and long-term execution. These are orthogonal strengths, not substitutes.”

For brands uneasy about overlap, Rajendiran argues the ecosystem already offers choice. “If a brand is uncomfortable working with a creator who owns a competing product, it simply chooses from the very large pool of creators who don’t.” The bigger risk, he says, lies elsewhere: “The real problem isn’t creators becoming brand owners. The real problem is trust decay.”

This is where agencies continue to play a role. “Not as deal brokers, but as trust optimisers,” Rajendiran adds, pointing to the need for incentive alignment and honest collaboration design.

Sahiba Dhandhania, CEO and Founder of Confluencr, situates creator entrepreneurship within a much larger shift. “Creator-led ventures aren’t a disruption; they are an evolution of value creation,” she says, noting that the creator economy is projected to grow from $192 billion in 2025 to over $528 billion by 2030. 

As creators move deeper into commerce and community ownership, she believes agencies must evolve from intermediaries into ecosystem architects, enabling co-creation, revenue-sharing and clear IP frameworks.

For brands, this evolution calls for sharper frameworks rather than avoidance. Clear category boundaries, upfront disclosure, and a distinction between early-stage creator brands and scaled incumbents will be critical. More importantly, brands will need to decide whether creators are being engaged as endorsers, long-term partners or co-creators—because ambiguity, more than competition, is where friction begins.

As Rajendiran puts it, this isn’t a conflict problem. “It’s a maturity problem. And mature ecosystems don’t eliminate overlaps—they learn how to allocate trust efficiently.”

The regional push

By 2030, regional creators won’t be a side note in brand campaigns; they’ll be at the centre of media strategy. “Campaigns will no longer be built in metros and then translated downward,” says Rajendiran. “They’ll be built region-first and scaled upward. That’s not a creative choice—it’s a distribution reality.”

Trust in India, he adds, is language-led, not celebrity-led. “People don’t buy because something is famous. They buy because it feels familiar. And familiarity is strongest when content speaks the same language, context, and cultural shorthand as the audience.” This shift is already visible: brands see higher performance from localised content across categories, from awareness to conversion.

Dhandhania highlights the tangible impact. “Localised influencer partnerships improve conversion rates by roughly 50% and market penetration by 55% in regional contexts,” she notes. Regional creators act as cultural translators, explaining price, usage, value, and social proof—something national campaigns often can’t do at scale.

Prashant Nagar, Founder of DigiWhistle, adds a stark economic lens: “Regional influencers will take 60% of brand media budgets by 2030, up from 25% today. Tier 2 and Tier 3 creators deliver 4x engagement at half the cost of metro creators. Vernacular creators in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, and other languages could drive ₹84.5 lakh crore in consumer spend.”

For brands, this means media mixes will flip. The future is likely a 70/30 regional-to-metro split, prioritising hyperlocal trust over blanket visibility. “Regional isn’t niche,” Rajendiran concludes. “By 2030, it’s normal.”

Dark social & the end of illusory ROI

As public feeds grow noisier, real influence is moving into private spaces like WhatsApp, Telegram and Discord, where trust-led recommendations carry more weight but leave fewer visible signals. This shift is forcing influencer marketing to move beyond impressions and engagement rates, which were never more than rough proxies for impact.

Global creator ad spend crossed $37 billion in 2025, growing far faster than overall media spend, even as influence becomes harder to observe. According to Dhandhania, that contradiction marks the end of vanity metrics. 

“The era of vanity metrics is ending. Investments are shifting toward outcome-centric measurement,” she says. “You may not see the conversation, but you’ll see its footprint.”

By 2030, agencies will rely on behavioural signals, branded search lift, referrals, repeat purchases and saves, rather than visibility. For Nagar, this requires new commerce-led systems.

“We justify ROI through community commerce tracking using proprietary attribution models,” Nagar says. “Nano-influencers in closed communities deliver nearly five times the ROI because trust density is much higher.”

Rajendiran argues that dark social doesn’t weaken measurement; it corrects it.

“Public feeds were never where trust was built. They were where signals were performed,” he says. “The real question is not how many people saw this, but what changed because this existed.”

AI & its authenticity

As generative AI becomes embedded across the creator economy, authenticity is no longer defined by whether content is machine-assisted, but by whether audiences can trust the intent behind it. While 37% of consumers express interest in AI influencers, nearly half remain uncomfortable with brands using them, even as 86% of creators already rely on generative AI tools for ideation, editing, scripting or distribution.

This contradiction reflects an industry in transition. Tarkas believes the current moment mirrors earlier tech booms driven by novelty rather than understanding.

“The average consumer cannot really tell what is AI-generated and what isn’t,” he says. “A large part of the audience engaging with AI content may not even realise that it is AI-created.”

For Tarkas, this makes the present wave of AI-led experimentation feel temporary rather than transformative.

“Trust, relatability, and human connection can’t be replaced overnight,” he adds. “What we’re seeing right now is a bubble driven by novelty. It will settle.”

As AI tools become ubiquitous, their presence alone will stop being a differentiator. Rajendiran argues that by 2030, AI will be table stakes, not a creative advantage.

“When everyone has access to the same tools, AI stops being the differentiator,” he says. “What becomes scarce is not content quality. It’s confidence in intent.”

Rajendiran expects two parallel tracks to emerge. On one end, AI-native storytelling, virtual characters, episodic formats and narrative IP will scale effectively where disclosure is clear and storytelling is strong. On the other hand, deliberately human content will command a trust premium.

“Some creators will position themselves as unmistakably human,” he says. “Not optimised. Not polished. Just lived.”

From a platform and format perspective, AI is also reshaping how content is produced and experienced. Bagaria notes that AI-backed creation is quickly becoming the foundation for standardised content, even as short-form video remains dominant.

“There will always be space for deliberately human, unpolished content,, especially in niches where relatability drives trust,” he says, pointing to the growing role of immersive formats like AR- and VR-enabled influencer campaigns.

For Dhandhania, the future definition of authenticity hinges on transparency rather than production style.

“Authenticity will not mean unedited. It will mean verified intent and transparency,” she says.

By 2030, Dhandhania expects AI-augmented content to be the norm, but trust to be measured through consistency, disclosure and long-term credibility.

“Audiences won’t reject AI-enhanced creators,” Rajendiran adds. “They’ll reject ambiguity.”

In an AI-saturated ecosystem, authenticity will no longer be about resisting technology — it will be about making intent unmistakably clear.

What the future looks like 

By 2030, influencer marketing will be a core commercial engine, spanning awareness, trust-building, and conversion. One-off campaigns will become rare. As Dhanush notes, “One-off campaigns are inefficient at building trust.” 

Brands will instead work with creator cohorts over long periods, where repetition compounds credibility in ways reach never can.  Dhandhania adds that this shift toward revenue-sharing and long-term partnerships will “reinforce accountability and sustained brand equity, not episodic shoutouts.”

Creator marketing will split into two lanes. Rajendiran describes one as trust-led and relationship-driven, thriving in private communities and long-term bonds, while the other is entertainment-led, with creators building formats, micro-dramas, and IP that audiences follow regardless of brand mentions. 

This approach collapses the old divide between awareness and performance, “Some creators introduce, some deepen trust, and some convert,” he says.

Measurement will evolve from vanity metrics to behavioural signals, saves, shares, repeat engagement, and actual purchase action. Sahiba notes that sentiment and behavioural analytics will replace impressions, while Rajendiran adds, “Scale without signal will stop being impressive.”

Formats and audiences will also shift dramatically. Nagar predicts live shopping in regional languages could drive 50% of e-commerce sales, AR virtual try-ons may increase purchase confidence 8x, and gaming influencers could shape 40% of Gen Alpha spending. Elder creators (50+) will tap the silver economy, and niche verticals like pet care may see a ₹10,000 crore market emerge.

The ecosystem itself is growing fast. Sahiba forecasts a 23–25% CAGR, potentially surpassing $1 trillion in influenced commerce by 2030, driven by private channels, direct monetisation, and tighter creator-brand alignment.

“In short, influencer marketing will move from reach to relationships, from posts to systems, and from short-term wins to durable trust,” as Rajendiran puts it.

The future of influencer marketing lies in relationships, not reach. By 2030, brands and creators who prioritise trust, long-term collaboration, and clear intent will turn influence into measurable, lasting impact.