Influencer marketing statistics in India: the published figures, with their source, date and what each measures

There is no official figure for influencer marketing in India. Published statistics come from the advertising self-regulator, the platforms, consultancies and industry bodies, and the vendors that sell creator services. ASCI found 97.3% of the 1,609 influencer ads it processed in 2025-26 required modification (ASCI, 28 May 2026). The four market sizes disagree because each counts something different.

This page comes from vexo.club: an influencer marketing agency run from one desk in Delhi NCR. It quotes each figure from the page that published it, read on 18 October 2026, says whose number it is, and adds no two sources together. A newer edition of any source replaces its line here, dated.

What is the influencer marketing market size in India?

Four estimates are in print and none is an official count: EY projected ₹3,375 crore by 2026 (EY, 2 April 2024); The Goat Agency and Kantar put 2024 at ₹3,600 crore (Social Samosa, 11 June 2025); Kofluence put 2025 at ₹3,000-3,500 crore (press release, 14 May 2026); a Zefmo byline puts all deployment above ₹10,000 crore (Storyboard18, 28 August 2026). Each counts something different:

• EY, with BigBang.Social and Collective Artists Network. “Influencer marketing is expected to grow by 25% in 2024, reaching INR2,344 crore and to INR3,375 crore by 2026”, at an 18% CAGR (EY, 2 April 2024). The report labels these EY estimates; its survey ran in September and October 2023. EY’s partner on the report, BigBang.Social, is Collective Artists Network’s “flagship influencer platform”, as Storyboard18 reported on 19 February 2026.
• The Goat Agency (WPP Media) with Kantar. The report “estimates the influencer marketing industry in India to be worth ₹3,600 crore in 2024, with projected growth of 25% in 2025”, drawing on Kantar’s TGI syndicated study, as Social Samosa reported on 11 June 2025. The same coverage calls The Goat Agency “WPP Media’s influencer and content marketing division”; this page quotes the coverage, not the report.
• Kofluence. Its release says the sector “is valued at ₹3,000-3,500 Cr in 2025, sustaining a 22% CAGR from that base” and “is projected to reach ₹4,500-5,000 Cr by 2027” (press release distributed by PTI and carried by The Week, 14 May 2026). Its methodology section says “Industry size estimates are Kofluence estimates based on desk research, expert discussion, and industry analysis”. Kofluence runs an influencer marketing platform, so this is a vendor estimate.
• Zefmo. “Zefmo’s 2026 report estimates that India’s actual influencer marketing deployment has crossed Rs 10,000 crore, against a formal estimate of about Rs 3,375 crore,” its co-founder and chief executive wrote (Storyboard18, 28 August 2026). The article sets out no method, and its “formal estimate” of about ₹3,375 crore matches EY’s projection for 2026; the byline does not say whose it is. Zefmo’s site calls it an influencer marketing agency.

A fifth number travels without an owner. A PTI story of 14 July 2026, carried by Deccan Chronicle, opens: “India’s influencer marketing industry, estimated at around Rs 3,600 crore in 2024, is on course to cross Rs 5,000 crore this financial year.” It does not say whose estimate either half is; the 2024 figure matches the ₹3,600 crore The Goat Agency and Kantar published for 2024 (Social Samosa, 11 June 2025). The desk’s overview of the Indian market quotes EY’s projection; this page sets it beside the others.

Fig. 01 · At a glance

Four published sizes of the Indian market, and what each one is

Why do the published market sizes disagree?

Because they measure different things, for different years, by different methods. One sizes the sector from research and stated assumptions, one values it from a syndicated study, one is a vendor’s desk estimate, and one estimates all money deployed. None is a count of rupees paid to creators.

EY is plain about the limits of its own number. Its report says “Data around monetization is not available, and hence estimates have been used and assumptions made”, and that “Responses received from survey respondents have not been verified” (EY, State of influencer marketing in India, 2 April 2024). No official body publishes a market size for influencer marketing in India, so each estimate is a model built on someone’s data. Side by side, the four answer four different questions:

How much of Indian advertising is digital, and where do creators sit in it?

Digital is most of it, and creators sit inside digital without a line of their own. According to the FICCI-EY report released on 24 March 2026, digital advertising rose 26% to ₹947 billion in 2025 and “the segment made up 63% of total ad revenues”, which “rose by 13% to INR1.5 trillion” (EY India newsroom). The same page thanks “Meta, our Title Partner” for the report’s launch.

WPP Media, whose influencer and content marketing division is The Goat Agency, forecast on 16 June 2026 that “Social and other digital advertising is projected to hit $8.3 billion with a 13.2% growth rate, fueled by short-form video, creator content, and the rising popularity of ‘microdramas’” (WPP Media, This Year Next Year). Neither report says how much of the digital line is paid to creators, so neither is an influencer figure.

What do ASCI’s numbers say about influencer ads?

That nearly every influencer ad ASCI processed needed changing, and that illegal betting led the violations. ASCI’s Annual Complaints Report 2025-26, released on 28 May 2026, says: “Of the 1,609 influencer ads processed during the last financial year, 97.3% required modification, with over 54% promoting categories prohibited by law or where advertising is restricted” (ASCI press release).

Two cautions before quoting it. ASCI’s release of 28 May 2026 uses 97.3% for two different figures: the share of all scrutinised ads that were on digital media and the share of influencer ads that needed changes. Its base is also the ads ASCI looked at: of all 11,581 cases ASCI reviewed in 2025-26, “93% of these cases came from ASCI’s proactive monitoring”, the same release says, and it gives no separate share for influencer ads. It is not a rate for all influencer posts in India. What ASCI requires of a brand sets out the rules those ads broke.

The earlier counts are not one series. ASCI processed 1,015 influencer ads in 2024-25, of which 98% required modification (Annual Complaints Report 2024-25), and 1,173 in the half year from April to September 2025, again 98% (Half-Yearly Complaints Report 2025-26). The half-yearly report puts its rise in ads reviewed down to “stronger surveillance and public vigilance”, so a bigger count is partly more looking. The 2025-26 release names the five largest influencer violation categories:

What did ASCI find when it checked 100 well-known creators?

Three in four of them failed to meet disclosure norms, according to ASCI’s Half-Yearly Complaints Report 2025-26, which covers April to September 2025. Its second dipstick study read brand posts published between 1 March and 15 July 2025 by the creators on Forbes India’s Top 100 Digital Stars 2024 list, on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, and found “an increase in the number of influencers failing to disclose paid collaborations - 76% vs. 69% the previous year” (the report).

Of the 100 handles, the same report says 10 carried no promotional content in the period, 12 had appropriate disclosures, 2 were dismissed on evidence of no material connection and 76 were in violation, of which “72 cases (95%) agreed to put the disclosure labels without contest”.

What do the platforms publish about creators in India?

Their own counts, usually in a launch post, and not independently audited as far as the announcements say. Three that brands quote:

• YouTube Shopping. The footnotes to a Google India blog post of 24 September 2026 say “More than 50% of eligible creators in India are enrolled in the YouTube Shopping affiliate program as of May 2026”, that average creator payouts grew “more than 160% year over year from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026”, and that “more than 19M videos have been tagged with affiliate products” since launch.
• YouTube Shorts. Google’s India blog post on Brandcast 2025, of 11 September 2025, says “YouTube Shorts has over 650 million monthly logged-in viewers”.
• Myntra on Instagram. Myntra said its Instagram affiliate programme “recorded more than one million sign-ups within a month, with 200,000 creators already producing content”, as MediaBrief reported on 14 October 2026.

A sign-up is not a creator who posts, and an enrolled creator is not one who sells: these numbers measure the reach of a programme, not a result for a brand. The guide to how creator-led commerce works sets out what each programme does for a brand.

Fig. 06 · At a glance

What a self-regulator’s or platform’s figure is, and what a vendor’s is

What do the festive season 2026 numbers say so far?

Qoruz’s count, a vendor’s, says more brands use creators each festive season and that a few of them hold most of the spend. Qoruz, a creator intelligence platform, expects festive influencer marketing spend of ₹900 crore in 2026, up from around ₹700 crore in 2025, as Storyboard18 reported on 26 August 2026, citing Moneycontrol.

The same report says “the top 10-15% of participating brands account for nearly 65% of festive creator marketing spend”, and that Diwali accounts for 49% of festive collaborations, with the rest spread across Navratri, Durga Puja, Dussehra, Ganesh Chaturthi and regional festivals. These are vendor estimates, and the 2026 figures were projections made in August. Its count of brands running creator-led festive campaigns:

The sales themselves are measured by others. Redseer estimated “gross merchandise value (GMV) of more than $2.5 billion, or about Rs 24,200 crore, during the opening two days of festive sales”, as Telangana Today reported on 11 October 2026, and CAIT expects festive trade “to exceed Rs 7 lakh crore during the Navratri-to-Diwali period” (IANS, carried by Investment Guru India on 14 October 2026). Neither is a creator figure, and neither should be divided by one.

KlugKlug, an influencer marketing software platform, counted 2.88K influencers posting for Flipkart’s Big Billion Days and 1.36K for Amazon’s Great Indian Festival, and found that “136 creators who featured both brands” recorded engagement rates of 4.43% on followers, “roughly four times the rates reported for creators working with individual brands” (Medianews4u, 15 October 2026). The release gives no dates beyond “the festive sales period” and does not say whether the two groups of creators are of comparable follower size, so the gap is a lead to test, not a benchmark. How a festive brief is planned covers the windows themselves.

What do brands say about their creator budgets?

Most say they will spend more, and many say measuring it is the hard part. BCG’s report From Content to Commerce found that “70% of brands surveyed plan to increase creator budgets by 1.5–3x over the next 2–3 years”, with influencer marketing at “10–20% of their total marketing budgets”, as Storyboard18 reported on 4 May 2025.

The same coverage lists brands’ concerns as “fake followers (74%), uncertain ROI (40%), and brand risk (38%)”. Kofluence’s release of 14 May 2026 says “13.3% of brands now directly link influencer marketing spend to formal revenue targets”, from a survey of “50 brand managers”. A survey of 50 is a reading of a room, not of the market.

B2B has its own numbers. LinkedIn’s Global B2B Marketing Outlook, as Storyboard18 reported on 19 March 2026, says “62% of Indian B2B buyers who use creators rely on input from them during the final stage of the buying process”. The guide to B2B creators on LinkedIn covers who those creators are.

How many creators are there in India, and what does each estimate measure?

Two estimates are in print, and they count different people. BCG put monetised creators at 2 to 2.5 million, as Storyboard18 covered its report on 4 May 2025, and Kofluence put active creators at 4.0 to 4.4 million or more, in its release of 14 May 2026. Which is right depends on what counts as a creator.

Kofluence’s figure is of “active professionals”, of whom 15.2% are “registered as a business entity or GST individual”; BCG’s is of “monetized creators”, and it said “only 8–10% of creators monetize effectively”. Active, monetised and registered are three different populations. For a brand the useful number is smaller still: the creators whose audience matches the brief, which is a shortlist, not a statistic. The guide to how creator tiers differ sets out what each size of creator is booked for.

How should a brand read a vendor statistic before repeating it?

By asking who sold the study, what it counted, for which period, from what sample, and whether the full report is public. A firm that sells creator services has a reason to publish a large market and a fast-growing one. That does not make its number wrong, but it decides how the number is labelled.

The main sources on this page sit somewhere between a self-regulator counting its own cases and a vendor selling creator services:

A borrowed number stays honest in a deck when it keeps its label. The habits that keep it:

Five checks decide whether a borrowed figure is ready for a deck.

Fig. 10 · At a glance

Five checks before a statistic goes into a deck

The press kit has the desk’s facts and boilerplate for anyone who cites this page. A brief that needs a sourced number for the deck can be sent to the desk; the report columns are the same ones the desk fills every Monday.

Questions brands ask

What is the market size of influencer marketing in India? It depends on the definition. EY’s report of 2 April 2024 projected ₹3,375 crore by 2026; The Goat Agency and Kantar put 2024 at ₹3,600 crore, as Social Samosa reported on 11 June 2025; and Kofluence’s release of 14 May 2026 put 2025 at ₹3,000-3,500 crore. A Zefmo byline of 28 August 2026 puts all deployment above ₹10,000 crore.

Which market-size figure should a brand quote in a deck? The one whose definition fits the sentence, with its publisher and year beside it. Quote EY’s for a projection of the sector to 2026, The Goat Agency and Kantar’s for what 2024 was worth, and Kofluence’s for 2025, labelled as a vendor’s range. Quote Zefmo’s only as one agency’s view of all money deployed, and never add two of them together.

How many influencers are there in India? Kofluence’s release of 14 May 2026 estimates 4.0 to 4.4 million active creators, and BCG’s report, as Storyboard18 covered it on 4 May 2025, put monetised creators at 2 to 2.5 million. The first covers creators active on the platforms, the second those who earn from them. Both are estimates, not a register.

What share of influencer ads break ASCI’s rules? Of the 1,609 influencer ads ASCI processed in 2025-26, 97.3% required modification, according to ASCI’s Annual Complaints Report 2025-26, released on 28 May 2026. That is a share of the ads ASCI processed, in a year when 93% of all ASCI’s cases came from its own monitoring, not a share of all influencer posts in India.

Is influencer marketing growing in India? Every estimate here that gives a rate says yes: EY’s report of 2 April 2024 used an 18% CAGR to 2026, The Goat Agency and Kantar projected “growth of 25% in 2025”, as Social Samosa reported on 11 June 2025, and Kofluence’s release of 14 May 2026 a 22% CAGR from 2025. WPP Media’s forecast of 16 June 2026 expects social and other digital advertising, which it says short-form video, creator content and microdramas are fuelling, to grow 13.2% in 2026.

Does vexo.club publish its own numbers? Only figures verified against a record. The desk’s weekly report carries reach, engagement rate, cost per acquisition, CPM and the next move, and marks any figure that cannot be verified instead of totalling it. Campaign results are metrics on request.