Taking the secretary of ministry of information & broadcasting, Government of India Apurva Chandra’s thoughts forward about supporting the young talent at FICCI Frame 2023, YouTube India director Ishan John Chatterjee gave a keynote address on “Building the Future of the Creator Economy in India.”
Chatterjee gave examples of an 80-year-old grandmother from West Bengal who shares her recipe videos on YouTube, and two farmers from Maharashtra who share steps on agritech with the farming community, to explain the power of creator economy on YouTube. “Today, with the ubiquity of smartphones, of cheap data, and of other emerging technologies, stories are travelling farther and wider than ever before. And they’ve been consumed by more people in deeply personal ways,” he said. Today, anyone with a mobile device can not only create a video, but also review it. They can recreate it into different content format as well as can react to it. “And on YouTube, we’re seeing that the lines between a consumer of a video and a creator, are blurring. Today, everyone is a creator, and that is leading to the explosion of hyperlocal communities and new content genres.” So be it automobile enthusiasts, artists in tribal areas, mental health communities, and even stay at home parents who are converting everyday household chores into helpful content, Chatterjee highlighted how YouTube is taking these niches to mainstream, fuelling aspirations of creators and is also helping them make a living for themselves.
With the help of YouTube Partner Programme, lakhs of creators in India continue to monetise their knowledge, talent and expertise. These creative entrepreneurs are hiring people and forming new businesses. Chatterjee stated that the latest Oxford Economics study on the state of the creator economy, estimated that YouTube’s creative ecosystem contributed more than Rs 10,000 crores to India’s GDP in 2021 and supported the equivalent of seven and a half lakh full time jobs. “Globally, in the last three years, YouTube has paid out over $50 billion to creators and partners all over the world. Between July 2021 and June 2022, we paid out over $6 billion to the music industry and over 30 per cent of that came from user generated content,” he mentioned. “So as we look ahead, we think that the growth of the creator economy in the future is going to come from creativity and also from finding new ways to make our creator community commercially successful.”
He said that when it comes to commercial success, “the digital behaviour of Indians continues to evolve. And as more and more Indians participate in online commerce, new business models will emerge. As that happens, YouTube will continue to offer more opportunities for creators to monetise their content outside of ads, by expanding our subscriptions business, by investing in shopping and by continually expanding our fan funded monetisation options.”
He revealed that in December 2022, six million viewers across the world bought a channel membership on YouTube, and that was 20 per cent above the previous period. “So even as we continue to innovate, I’m so encouraged by the tremendous impact that our community of passionate creators continue to have. The collective mind of this cohort of creative entrepreneurs has the potential to impact our country’s economic growth, our pace of job creation, and to expand our influence across the world.” And he is sure that even as YouTube continues to invest in the creator economy, their fantastic creators will continue to put India on the world map.
FICCI Frames is being conducted at Westin hotel in Powai, Mumbai from 3 to 5 May.