India's Creator Commerce Gap and the Race to Close it

The rapid rise of ‘influencer influenced’ buying decisions is something that is not up for debate in today’s socially connected world. From sales of fashion to beauty to electronics to food to kitchen appliances, even real estate is something that influencers are increasingly powering. As per various estimates, 30% of all personal consumption today in India is influenced by creators, and this number will only increase. However, the monetisation opportunities are something that are available only to the top 1% of creators, and thereby directly attributable creator commerce (content to ‘call to action’) is sub 5% in India today. 

Why India Lags Behind

In countries with high creator penetration amongst social media users, roughly 20% of e-commerce sales are driven through social channels. These include markets in the west like Brazil and the United States, as well as South-east Asian markets like Indonesia and Thailand. India sits well below that despite having one of the world's largest and fastest-growing social media audiences. The gap is not explained by consumer scepticism or lack of digital access. It comes down to a single structural problem: most creators in India do not know that monetisation through commerce is even possible.

Indians are already checking Instagram before buying a skincare product and watching YouTube before picking a new phone. Creators today drive consumption decisions through their ability to cut through selection fatigue on traditional e-commerce, offer authentic and entertaining product discovery, and provide the kind of visual storytelling that categories like fashion, beauty, home décor, and travel genuinely require. Electronics is another telling example: an estimated 50 to 60% of mobile phone purchases in India are influenced by online content, yet the creators producing that content receive nothing from the resulting sales. The consumer behaviour is already there. The monetisation infrastructure is not. 

The core structural gap is the absence of a strong video-commerce consumer platform. In South-east Asia, short-form video platforms created a natural home for live shopping and affiliate-driven content. India does not have an equivalent. What exists instead are static e-commerce interfaces, well-optimised for search and price comparison, but not built around content-driven discovery. Live commerce had a first iteration in India in the form of television shopping channels, but the reach of any individual channel was always limited, and television is a declining medium regardless. The digital successor to that model has not materialised, and someone needs to build it.

The Economics That Make This Inevitable

From a brand's perspective, the return on ad spend (ROAS) on creator commerce is structurally compelling. On a typical direct-to-consumer digital channel, a brand might achieve a 2x to 5x ROAS on a good day. On a social commerce platform operating on a pure conversion-linked commission model, say 10 to 12% per sale, the ROAS is fixed at 8x to 10x. It does not fluctuate with auction dynamics or festive-season bidding wars. You pay only when a sale happens.

Brands have largely used influencer channels for awareness and reach, top-of-the-funnel work. What creator commerce does differently is close the loop and turn content into conversion. Attributable creator commerce has grown 2x to 3x across platforms over the last 12 to 18 months, with penetration of gross merchandise value reaching up to 10% on the most evolved platforms and below 5% on most others. All major platforms expect this to grow a further 2x to 3x over the next three to four years. That is a signal. The moment brands see that dynamic at scale, budgets will shift. We are at the beginning of that inflection.

It is also worth noting what makes this channel structurally different from the performance marketing playbook that came before it. Facebook advertising delivered excellent ROAS in the early years, but the economics degraded as the platform matured and competition for inventory drove up costs. Creator commerce does not work that way. The commission rate is agreed upfront between platform and brand. The ROAS does not vary by season or by month. Conversion volumes may fluctuate, but the return on every rupee spent is known before the campaign begins. That predictability is rare in digital marketing, and it is one of the reasons I believe this channel will attract sustained brand investment rather than being treated as an experimental budget line.

The Creator Side of the Equation

Most discussions about social commerce focus on consumers and brands. The creator is the overlooked variable. Creator penetration amongst social media users in India is projected to double over the next five years, and the growth is accelerating as people discover that monetising an audience is a real option, not just something reserved for celebrities and mega creators. Someone who joined a creator commerce platform 24 months ago and was earning a modest commission income is now earning 5x that amount. A housewife in a tier-2 city selling kitchen utensils can clear one and a half lakh rupees a month in commissions. Word travels fast. One person figures it out and tells ten others.

But here is the critical problem: most of those creators do not know this is possible. In markets where strong video-commerce platforms operate, the platform itself educates creators. It tells them affiliate monetisation exists, shows them what content converts, and provides the tools to act on that. In the absence of such a platform in India, that education gap has to be filled by the infrastructure layer itself. A creator with 100,000 followers on Instagram, assuming even a 2% conversion rate, can drive 2,000 orders a month. That is a meaningful income. But a creator building content on why a new smartphone is great, or reviewing a skincare product, or documenting a home renovation, is currently doing all of that work and receiving nothing for the sales they are quietly generating for brands. Only the top 1% of creators, those with follower counts large enough to attract direct brand partnerships, are being compensated for the influence they are already exercising. The other 99% are not.

Why No Single Independent Player Will Own This

The obvious question is whether existing social media platforms will simply build this natively. The structural answer is no, and it comes down to the nature of the business itself. Managing a creator network is a complex operation. It requires onboarding, education, data analytics, tax administration, and commission tracking across tens of thousands of individuals. That is fundamentally different from the core business of a consumer-facing platform, which is keeping users engaged and growing its audience. Social networks in my opinion will not want to manage 200,000 creators. That is a distraction from their core and a completely separate business model.

Other markets have already validated this model, and the conditions in India point in the same direction. Platforms like Wishlink are building precisely this infrastructure layer, and we believe the opportunity is significant. 

Where This Is Headed

India's creator commerce ecosystem is nascent. Without a dominant video-commerce platform accelerating creator education the way similar platforms did in South-east Asia, the growth curve here will be flatter and the journey longer. South-east Asia reached meaningful social commerce penetration in roughly five years with that tailwind. India may take closer to ten without it. But the destination is not in question. Social media usage in India is growing, data costs remain among the lowest in the world at under US$3 a month for high-speed connectivity, and the entrepreneurial instinct to turn a following into an income is deeply Indian. The three macro conditions that define a social commerce market, low current penetration, a growing creator base, and rising time spent on social platforms, are all present and all moving in the right direction. The question is not whether this market will develop. It is who builds the infrastructure layer that sits underneath and owns the creator relationships, when it does.

By Nikhil Marwaha | Partner, Vertex Ventures SEA & India

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