Indian Brands’ Influencer Marketing Budgets Set to Increase Despite TikTok Ban

According to Quartz, more than a third of Indian brands have doubled their influencer marketing budget over the past year. This may come as a shock, considering the fact that the world’s most popular social media app, TikTok, was banned in the country in 2020.

The Indian content creator industry is set to grow 25% to $290.3 million by 2025. The country is home to nearly 80 million content creators including video streamers, influencers, and bloggers. India’s nano-influencers with less than 10,000 followers attracted the maximum engagement on Instagram in 2022, although micro-influencers with 10,000-50,000 followers had the largest total audience on Instagram and YouTube.

Without TikTok, what makes creators in India unique?

Statistics show that TikTok’s popularity is projected to increase steadily in the UK over the next few years, with predictions that there will be 15 million UK TikTok users in 2025. But looking at India’s outstanding creator marketing growth statistics, we can see that the ‘OG platforms’, YouTube and Instagram, serve the APAC region well.

Buying decisions of up to 35% of consumers in India, according to a January 2023 survey, were driven by influencer posts, Reels, and videos on platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

So who are the creators encouraging brands to invest their spend in the influencer marketing channel?