New Delhi: KlugKlug, a global Influencer Marketing SaaS platform, has unveiled data revealing that India’s influencer marketing industry has surpassed ₹10,000 crores in real deployment, far exceeding commonly cited estimates of ₹3,000–4,000 crores. The findings have triggered discussions across marketing, agency, and digital commerce communities, highlighting the growing gap between traditional measurement systems and the actual scale of the creator economy.
According to KlugKlug’s internal research, only one-quarter of India’s influencer marketing spend flows through visible, organised channels, while the remaining 75% occurs directly between brands and creators. The fast-expanding D2C landscape is reshaping spend behaviour, with over 100 brands independently deploying more than ₹20 crores annually through in-house creator teams rather than agency-led structures. Founder-led initiatives, product seeding, and barter-driven collaborations continue to generate significant Earned Media Value (EMV), though these do not appear in conventional advertising models.
Kalyan Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO, KlugKlug, commented, “Influencer Marketing has fundamentally changed in the era of AI, automation, and precision targeting. What we are witnessing now is not just growth but a structural shift in how commerce, content, and consumer intent converge. Agile brave young brands are taking away market share across consumer categories within months of launch and there’s a ton of e-commerce correlated data that underscores the data scienced power of Influencer and Content Marketing. With intelligent influencer marketing platforms, and KlugKlug leading that story, brands finally have visibility into what truly works across the creator landscape. This is a turning point for the industry and it’s much larger already.”
Vaibhav Gupta, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer, Klug Tech Private Limited, added, “The gap in India’s influencer marketing numbers has existed largely because the industry relied on limited, agency-visible datasets that never reflected the full picture. With this new analysis, we tried to bring much-needed clarity to the industry. This data is not just a correction but the beginning of a transformation in how influencer marketing is measured, understood, and valued in India. Our goal is to enable a more transparent, data-driven foundation for the ecosystem moving forward.”
The report also highlights the role of thousands of micro and nano creators as the backbone of digital commerce. With D2C brands increasingly relying on internal influencer engines deploying significant budgets, India’s creator economy is evolving faster than traditional tools can track. Industry leaders, agencies, and investors are now recognising the opportunity to rebuild the measurement framework with more precision, transparency, and data-driven rigour, marking a critical inflection point for the sector.
