India’s influencer marketing market exceeds Rs 10,000 crore, report finds

New Delhi: Influencer marketing company KlugKlug has released new findings suggesting that India’s influencer marketing industry may be significantly larger than current public estimates.

The company’s internal analysis places the real market size at more than Rs 10,000 crore, considerably higher than the commonly cited Rs 3,000–4,000 crore range.

The data has triggered extensive debate across marketing, digital commerce and agency networks, with discussions centring on the longstanding gaps in conventional measurement frameworks. 

According to KlugKlug, only one-quarter of India’s influencer marketing spending is recorded through visible, organised channels, while the remaining 75% takes place directly between brands and creators without passing through agencies or platforms.

The findings also indicate a shift in spending behaviour within India’s direct-to-consumer sector. The company states that more than 100 brands are now independently deploying upwards of Rs 20 crore annually through in-house creator teams, bypassing traditional agency-driven structures. 

Founder-led content initiatives, extensive product seeding, and barter-based collaborations continue to generate high earned media value, although such activity is not formally accounted for in conventional advertising expenditure models.

Discussing market developments, Kalyan Kumar, Co-Founder and CEO, KlugKlug, said, “Influencer Marketing has fundamentally changed in the era of AI, automation, and precision targeting. What we are witnessing now is not just growth but a structural shift in how commerce, content, and consumer intent converge.”

He added, “Agile brave young brands are taking away market share across consumer categories within months of launch and there's a ton of e-commerce correlated data that underscores the data scienced power of Influencer and Content Marketing.”

He explained, “With intelligent influencer marketing platforms, and KlugKlug leading that story, brands finally have visibility into what truly works across the creator landscape. This is a turning point for the industry and it's much larger already.”

Vaibhav Gupta, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Klug Tech, added, “The gap in India’s influencer marketing numbers has existed largely because the industry relied on limited, agency-visible datasets that never reflected the full picture. With this new analysis, we tried to bring much-needed clarity to the industry.

This data is not just a correction but the beginning of a transformation in how influencer marketing is measured, understood, and valued in India. Our goal is to enable a more transparent, data-driven foundation for the ecosystem moving forward.”

KlugKlug’s analysis suggests that micro and nano creators now account for a substantial portion of digital commerce activity, with D2C brands increasingly operating internal influencer teams with sizeable annual budgets.