How regional creators are reshaping India’s influencer economy

India’s creator economy has already moved beyond the metros. The money, however, has not moved at the same speed.

As per the Indian School of Business (ISB) and Brand-Creator Network Platform Hashfame, non-metro creators now account for 66% of India's creator base, while regional-language creators collectively represent 58% of the country's creator ecosystem, compared with 42% for Hindi creators. Yet approximately 85% of non-metro creators do not complete even a single brand campaign in a year.

That gap captures the central contradiction shaping India's next phase of influencer marketing. The supply of regional creators is growing rapidly, engagement is rising and brands are increasingly using local voices to reach audiences during festivals and cultural moments. But for most creators outside the major urban centres, content creation remains an audience-building exercise rather than a reliable source of income.

The next opportunity in regional influencer marketing, therefore, may not be discovering more creators. It may be finding brands for the millions of creators who already exist.

The creator economy is no longer Hindi-led

India had around 4.12 million creators in 2025, up from 0.96 million in 2020. Of these, approximately 2.72 million were from non-metro markets. Non-metro creator supply grew 6.4 times between 2020 and 2025, compared with 2.6 times in metros.

Regional languages have become an equally important part of this expansion. Hindi creators account for 42% of the creator base, while creators producing content in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Malayalam, Gujarati, Bhojpuri and other regional languages collectively account for 58%. The numbers suggest that the centre of gravity of India's creator economy has shifted. But the commercial ecosystem built around it has not yet caught up.

However, this rise is now prompting agencies to create dedicated leadership for the segment. Edelman has appointed two regional creator marketing leads, and this move reflects a wider industry trend as agencies build capabilities to serve India's increasingly regional creator economy. 

Neha Markanda, Chief Business Officer, ShareChat and Moj, said, "The real growth story in India today is being written by hyperlocal voices from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities who understand their community's language, humour and everyday context better than any campaign brief ever could."

The platforms span more than 4,200 pincodes and consistently drive 1.5x to 3x higher engagement. During festivals, she said, participation spans more than 15 Indian languages, including Hindi, Punjabi, Odia, Gujarati, Bengali and Tamil.

"Brands that treat them as translation partners are missing the point. The ones that co-create with them are the ones winning regional India," she said.

That distinction is increasingly important. Regional creators are not simply translating a national campaign into another language. In many cases, they are providing the cultural context through which the campaign becomes relevant in the first place.

AI can translate a Reel into a regional language. It cannot automatically make the content culturally regional. Meta's AI-powered translation tools now support Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Marathi, allowing creators to translate, dub and lip-sync Reels across languages. But the growing regional creator economy highlights the limits of language-only localisation.

DS Group uses regional creators to promote Catch Salt & Spices. The strategy relies on hyper-local cultural relevance.

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Engagement is not the problem

The argument that regional creators are primarily attractive because they are cheaper is also becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

Average creator engagement rose from 1.8% in 2020 to 7.2% in 2025, even as the overall creator base grew more than four times. Non-metro creators have also shown a consistent engagement premium over their metro counterparts. This suggests that regional creators may offer brands something more valuable than cost efficiency: deeper community participation.

To understand why regional creators continue to receive fewer brand opportunities despite their growing reach and influence, e4m reached out to marketers for a longer-term perspective on the challenges shaping regional creator monetisation. 

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Shantiswarup Panda, Chief Marketing Officer, Indriya said, “When we started the brand in 2024, we understood that we could build nativity and love for the brand by taking influencers on the road. We had 40 influencers right from our launch event, which is something jewellery brands typically did not do. We understood the game of influencers through categories such as skincare, personal care, home care, travel and food, where influencer marketing was already more developed.”

“Creators come somewhere in between a celebrity and a person you know personally. They are more credible than a celebrity, but less credible than someone you know personally. The more formal the industry becomes, the more it could move towards the celebrity route, and their trust levels could go down. The smaller they are, because they are niche, the more you trust them. There is a fine balance.” he said. 

Viraj Bahl, Founder and Managing Director, Veeba said, "Today, our marketing budget is spread across a 360-degree approach, including both ATL and BTL. However, I still believe ATL plays a very important role in building consumer confidence."

"When consumers see a brand investing in ATL, it signals that the company is large, established and committed to quality. ATL is expensive, but it continues to play an important role in building trust," he added.

Bahl's point also explains why the creator economy continues to face a structural challenge. A creator can generate high engagement and still lack the commercial legitimacy that brands traditionally associate with scale, visibility and established media.

One of the clearest areas where this shift is visible is festival marketing.

Pradeep Patteti, Co-Founder & CEO of Flutch, a influencer marketing and performance marketing agency, said, "We expect festive influencer investments to grow by 25-30% year-on-year, with a disproportionately larger share flowing into regional languages and commerce-led creator partnerships. A Malayalam creator talking about Onam or a Marathi creator covering Ganesh Chaturthi often creates a level of authenticity and familiarity that generic national campaigns struggle to replicate. This shift is also being driven by economics and performance. Industry data shows creators in smaller markets deliver engagement rates of 4.5-5.5%, compared to 3-4% for metro creators, while operating at a fraction of the campaign cost. We're also seeing a significant increase in vernacular briefs from brands, particularly across FMCG, personal care and consumer categories. The festive season of 2026 is likely to be a defining moment for regional creator marketing."

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During Odisha's Rath Yatra 2025, one creator campaign involved around 15 creators covering different aspects of the event, including its history, rituals, food stalls, fairs and local celebrations. The brand integration was designed to remain subtle rather than interrupt the cultural narrative. The campaign generated around 1.4 million views, according to campaign figures shared by the agency involved.

A similar approach is visible in FMCG and food marketing.

Aashirvaad Protein Atta activated around 1,300 creators across six to seven regional markets, including 1,000 nano creators and 300 micro creators. The creators produced content in local languages, generating nearly 68 million impressions within two days, according to campaign figures shared by the agency.

The significance of these campaigns lies in the scale of the creator mix. Instead of placing the entire budget behind one national influencer, brands are increasingly building networks of smaller creators who can offer cultural and geographic relevance.

This is particularly important during festivals, when a single national narrative often fails to capture how the occasion is experienced differently across India.

Industry executives increasingly compare regional creators with traditional local media assets.

A billboard or outdoor campaign gives a brand visibility within a specific geography. A regional creator offers a similar geographic connection, but with a layer of conversation, community participation and personal trust.

This is one reason why agencies are strengthening their regional capabilities. The growth is also visible in the creation of dedicated regional creator marketing roles across the industry.

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Parachute, for example, used a regional creator-led approach for a South-focused Holi campaign. The brand worked with Vithika Sheru, who has more than 1.2 million followers, to build a narrative around oiling hair before playing Holi and protecting it from colour damage.

The campaign was built around a specific cultural insight. Holi is not celebrated with the same intensity across all parts of South India, but the festival has growing social relevance among audiences in the region. The campaign therefore used a familiar regional voice to make the conversation more relevant. Doctor creators were also brought in to add credibility to the haircare message.

The strategy illustrates the growing sophistication of regional creator marketing. The objective is not simply to find someone who speaks a particular language. It is to find someone who understands how a particular audience experiences a cultural moment.

More creators, but fewer campaigns per creator

The expansion in supply has not translated into proportional monetisation.

As per the reports, the number of non-metro creators activated for campaigns increased from around 38,000 in 2020 to 408,000 in 2025. Yet the campaign-to-creator ratio fell from 0.37 to approximately 0.10 during the period.

Metro creators, in contrast, recorded a higher repeat monetisation ratio, which increased from 0.22 to 0.33.

In simple terms, more non-metro creators are entering the commercial ecosystem, but most are still doing very few campaigns.

Around 85% of non-metro creators complete no campaigns in a year. Only 2.1% complete five or more campaigns annually, a cohort the report identifies as economically significant.

This means that the regional creator economy is large, but its earning economy is still small.

The problem is particularly visible in markets such as Bhojpuri and Kannada, where creator supply is relatively high but campaign intensity is lower. The gap may not necessarily reflect weak audience demand. Instead, it points to a problem of commercial discovery and creator-brand matching.

During Cannes 2026, the growing visibility of regional voices was hard to miss. Coorg-based creator Rida Tharana, Bengal-rooted digital creator Niranjan Mondal and Kannada actor and lifestyle creator Disha Madan were among the Indian creators featured by brands.

This is only the start, for brands this could represent an untapped opportunity. For creators, however, it highlights the gap between being visible and being commercially discoverable.

The changing perception of regional authenticity

The rise of regional creators, however, has also exposed a deeper problem: the industry often wants regional authenticity, but only when it fits a familiar idea of what regional India should look like.

"Bihar is fast becoming one of India's most active content creator hubs," said Nisha Narayanan, Director and COO, Red FM.

"Young people across small towns are choosing reels and regional content over conventional 9-to-5 jobs, betting on visibility and audience trust to build a livelihood. The opportunity is real. Brand interest in regional, 'authentic Bharat' content is growing, and entertainment-led creators from Bihar are landing real money and real recognition," she said.

But Narayanan pointed to the uneven nature of the opportunity.

"Many creators face mockery for their accent, language and small-town identity, treated as a metro liability until success arrives, after which the same traits suddenly become charm," she said.

"Legitimacy at home is its own hurdle too. Families and communities often don't see content creation as a real career until the money starts showing up," Narayanan added.

The tension is increasingly visible in the way audiences and brands respond to creators from smaller towns.

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Pujarini Pradhan, known online as Life of Puja, became a viral creator after building an audience around unpolished village visuals alongside commentary on feminism, world cinema and literature. Her rise also triggered online speculation about whether her content could have been produced independently.

The debate soon expanded beyond one creator. Supporters argued that the scepticism reflected a form of internet classism, where audiences are comfortable with a particular image of rural India but suspicious when a creator from that background is articulate, intellectually confident and commercially successful.

Pradhan later clarified that while an agency handles brand partnerships, she writes, shoots and edits her content herself.

The episode raises a larger question for the industry: is the creator economy genuinely ready to value regional authenticity, or does it still expect regional creators to become "metro-ready" before they are considered commercially credible?

Anirudh Sridharan, Co-founder of HashFame, a network where brands discover and connect with creators directly, said, "The creator economy is often celebrated as a democratising force, but the reality is more nuanced. While creators from Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets are seeing stronger engagement and deeper community trust than many urban counterparts, monetisation continues to be concentrated in metro markets. Brands have recognised the value of regional audiences, yet a significant share of marketing budgets still flows to creators in established urban ecosystems. This creates a gap where regional creators are driving influence and cultural relevance, but not always receiving a proportional share of commercial opportunities. The next phase of growth will depend on whether brands move beyond experimentation and systematically invest in creators who are shaping consumer behaviour across India's non-metro markets."

The economics of regional influence

The financial value of creator income also changes depending on where the creator lives.

The report does not provide a single average annual income figure for rural and urban creators. Instead, it compares creator earnings based on campaign activity with local salaried wage benchmarks.

The average monthly earnings benchmark for regular salaried employees is approximately ₹17,033 in rural areas and ₹24,434 in urban and metro markets.

A nano creator completing two campaigns annually earns approximately ₹5,000 per month on an equivalent basis. That represents around 29% of the rural salaried wage benchmark and 20% of the urban benchmark.

At the other end, a micro creator completing five campaigns annually can earn an amount equivalent to approximately 147% of the rural salaried wage benchmark and 102% of the urban benchmark.

The same income, therefore, can have very different economic value depending on where a creator lives.

A creator earning ₹17,000 a month in a smaller town may be earning close to or above local salaried employment benchmarks. The same income in a metro may not represent the same level of economic mobility.

This is why creator earnings cannot be assessed using a single national benchmark.

The larger challenge, however, is that most creators never reach the campaign frequency required to make content creation economically meaningful.

Building repeat demand

The creator economy has grown rapidly on the supply side.

India had 4.12 million creators in 2025, compared with 0.96 million in 2020. Campaigns increased from 14,000 to 42,000 during the same period, while average spend per campaign rose 3.6 times.

Overall creator activation increased from approximately 9% to 15%. The share of creators completing at least two campaigns increased from 4% to 7%.

But these numbers also reveal the limits of the current model.

The market is growing, yet repeat monetisation remains concentrated among a small proportion of creators.

For brands, the opportunity is to move beyond one-off festival campaigns and build longer-term regional creator networks. For agencies and platforms, it is to improve discovery, matching and measurement so that creators in high-supply markets such as Bhojpuri and Kannada are not left commercially invisible.

For creators, the challenge is even more fundamental. Audience growth is no longer enough. The next stage of the creator economy will be determined by whether that audience can be converted into repeat commercial opportunities.

That may be the defining idea for India's next creator economy.

The regional creator is no longer a niche phenomenon. Regional languages represent the majority of India's creator base. Non-metro creators represent two-thirds of the market. Engagement is strong, festival marketing is increasingly localised and brands are actively looking for cultural relevance.

But the commercial ecosystem is still catching up.

India may have already solved the problem of finding regional voices. The harder problem now is ensuring that those voices are not simply discovered, watched and applauded, but paid consistently.