Creator Economy drives India's growth story: YouTube creators contributed over Rs 10,000 crore to GDP in 2021

Creator Economy drives India's growth story: YouTube's creative ecosystem contributed over Rs 10,000 crore to the Indian GDP and supported more than 750,000 full-time equivalent jobs in the country in 2021. YouTube also announced that Courses, a new product to bring a richer learning experience for viewers and a new way to monetise for creators, would begin rolling out in beta in 2023.

Today, billions of people consume the content powered by YouTube creators in India the world over, according to the findings of the latest Oxford Economics study by YouTube. This has helped creators unlock monetisation opportunities, allowing many to convert their passions into sustainable careers.

Constantly on the cusp of change, the influencer landscape’s transformation accelerated during the pandemic. The Metaverse and Web 3.0 frenzy added to the fast-tracked change. While many trends may take time to actualise and are present today in theory, there are experiments which have proved to be sustainable in the long run.

Vijay Subramaniam, Group CEO And Founder, Collective Artists Network, India’s largest creative talent community shared his insights “The competition is high octane. There is no region, language or age barrier for content creation, that is what makes the space more exciting and full of opportunities. Today we have creators who have understood the need to gain new skills and diversify into other content formats and entrepreneurship. Based on data and information, a creator needs to tailor their efforts and manage their goals to move ahead. This was a year of understanding the importance of making data-backed moves.”

YouTube announced that it would expand efforts to work with more healthcare institutions -- including Narayana, Manipal, Medanta, and Shalby -- to create and amplify credible content, covering more than 100 medical conditions, across Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati, Bengali and English The company said it will also support partners to achieve scale and efficiency in creating multilingual content.

Next year, qualified creators in India can begin offering free or paid Courses to provide in-depth, structured learning experiences for viewers. Courses will not only support richer learning experiences for audiences but also offer creators a new monetisation option LearnoHub, Speak English With Aishwarya, and Telusko, among others, will develop courses across academic and vocational subjects in various Indian languages in the beta phase, said YouTube.