Preeti Sarkar is a content creator and owner of the clothing brand, Peetizen.
Courtesy of Preeti Sarkar
Preeti Sarkar started posting on YouTube at the age of 18. Today, the 24-year-old has amassed a following of about 1.6 million on both Instagram and YouTube, and has launched her own clothing brand.
She’s part of the growing wave of influencers in India who have started their own businesses since establishing a social media presence.
Many top creators in India are leveraging their existing fan bases to build direct-to-consumer businesses —from Nitibha Kaul’s beauty brand and Kusha Kapila’s shapewear brand to Gaurav Taneja’s sports nutrition brand.
“It’s a very recent trend for the influencers [in India.] … Historically, we’ve seen successful entrepreneurs in India who have become influencers, and not the other way [around],” Amiya Swarup, who heads marketing advisory and is a partner at EY, told CNBC Make It.
India’s creator economy has seen a big surge in recent years. According to a May report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), there are now over 2 million monetized content creators influencing more than $350 billion in consumer spending in the country.
Direct revenue from the creator ecosystem is also projected to grow from about $20 billion to $25 billion in the 2024 fiscal year to more than $100 billion by the end of the decade, according to the report.
Creators today aren’t just entertainers — they’re also shaping consumer preferences and purchase decisions. The ecosystem is projected to drive more than $1 trillion in “creator-influenced” consumption by 2030, according to the BCG report.
Authenticity is currency
Sarkar says she started creating YouTube videos in 2018 about skincare, fashion and more. She’s based in Kolkata and most of her content is in Bengali.
“At that time in our … town, [YouTube] was not so famous, and people did not know what content creation actually is and what potential it holds,” Sarkar told CNBC Make It.
Her original filming setup was very simple. It consisted of a bucket, which she flipped upside down and used as a tripod for her phone. “Every day for eight to 10 hours, I just sat down and edited the videos. So it was a very long, tiring process that I did for five years, and there was no success,” Sarkar said.
“But one day, I just decided: ‘What if I just take my mask down and I just show people who I actually am?’ … So I just started making videos without makeup, without any filter, just kept my phone in my hand and started talking, and that became my brand. My identity is very authentic,” she added.
“People connect to me because they see themselves in me. I am that clumsy girl … So I would say that my personal brand is all about being genuine, and whatever flaws I have, I just show it to the world,” she said.
It’s that very strategy of showing up authentically online that Sarkar and many other influencers have credited for attracting their loyal followings.
Today, Sarkar is using a similar strategy to market her clothing brand, Preetizen. Instead of hiring professional models for her marketing campaign, Sarkar decided to launch a social media campaign in February asking her followers to apply to become models for her clothing line.
Preeti Sarkar with her models for her clothing brand, Preetizen.
“We made [it] a community driven brand … I told them: ‘If you want to become a model, I do not care about your height, skin tone, or however you look … I just want you to write [that you are] interested on this post, and I will select 10 people to become the face of my brand,” she said.
“And you won’t believe [it.] There were 60,000 plus comments … I was getting calls. It was crazy, and we went through most of them, and we selected 10 people,” said Sarkar, adding that the marketing campaign was a big turning point for her company.
Similarly, influencers have become an integral part of many marketing campaigns in India. That’s largely because content creators have audiences that trust them and their recommendations — which is crucial for sales, Swarup said.
Influencers in India are creating personalized content that can appeal to specific regions and hyper-local preferences. That can be very difficult for traditional media to do, so content creators are bridging that gap, Swarup added.
“I think … brands have also realized that authentic and transparent influencer engagement [can] benefit the brands significantly,” he added.
It has long been common to see creators in the U.S. leverage their audiences to create income streams, but the trend is relatively nascent in India.
It’s come by way of natural progression, Swarup said. In recent years, smartphones and data have become more accessible and affordable in India. “In 2008, there were 346 million registered mobile SIM cards in India. Between 2008 and 2024, this number more than tripled,” according to Data for India.
Data usage in India has grown from about 12 gigabytes a month in the 2020 fiscal year to about 27 gigabytes a month in the 2024 fiscal year, according to BCG.
“It’s all about demand and supply … Data consumption has really skyrocketed thanks to low [cost data] packages which consumers are [using],” Swarup said.
“So influencers have grown subsequently, and as their paychecks increase, their wallet size increases, right? They are obviously looking [into] other avenues of monetization, beyond just the content on YouTube or Instagram,” he added.
Notably, the Covid-19 pandemic also gave a big boost to the industry, Swarup said.
“We are at an inflection point where the influencer marketing [industry] has really grown during the Covid and the post-Covid time, because [many people] went digital, and that was the only form of engagement, interaction, or … communication that was happening,” he said.
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