Ishan Chatterjee of YouTube India on building the future of creator economy

Ishan Chatterjee speaks about how content creation is shaping communities online and how YouTube is building better monetizing opportunities for creators to empower them. He also talks about the future of the creator economy, and more.

The creator economy is booming. India has the largest YouTube audience by far, with approximately 467 million users engaging with the popular social video platform, according to Statista. With such an influx of independent influencers, bloggers, and videographers using social media to build online communities, content creation has become easily accessible.

Ishan Chatterjee, Managing Director, YouTube India, shares his insights on content creation, monetization and future of the creator economy. He also talks about how content is enabling creators to build a community.

Community Building

Chatterjee has observed that for the last 15 years, creators in India have turned to YouTube as a stage to share their skins and their stories and a single storyteller can move an entire community.

He talked about a few creators and how their content is helping build a community. Pushparani Sarkar, an 80-year-old grandmother from West Bengal shares her recipe videos on YouTube and is preserving the food traditions and culture of the region. Santosh and Akash Jadhav, two farmers from Sangli in Maharashtra share their latest tips on agri-tech with the farming community and are boosting the productivity of other farmers. Khwaja Moinuddin’s videos on YouTube are helping to feed hundreds of orphans in Hyderabad and Malal is helping fuel the aspirations of thousands of Tamil speakers through her English-speaking courses.

Talking about the creators, he said, “This is the power of the creator economy and that economy is coming of age today in India.”

Consumers = Creators

He explained that today with the ubiquity of smartphones of cheap data and other emerging technologies, stories are traveling farther and wider than ever before and they've been consumed by more people in deeply personal ways. Anyone with a mobile device can not just create a video, but they can review it, they can recreate it into different content formats, can react to it.

“On YouTube, we are seeing the lines between a consumer of a video and a creator blurring today. Everyone is a creator and that's leading to the explosion of hyperlocal communities and new content genres,” said he.

YouTube is helping take niches mainstream.

As per him, the creators are not just helping millions of Indians discover new things, learn more about specific topics, and fuel aspirations, but they're also making a living for themselves. He said that the YouTube partner program has enabled lakhs of creators in India to monetize their knowledge, their talent, and their expertise.

Past, Present and Future

The latest Oxford economic study on the state of the creator economy estimated that YouTube's creative ecosystem contributed more than 10,000 crores to India's GDP in 2021 and supported the equivalent of 7.5 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. He said that between July 2021 to June 2022, the platform paid out over $6 billion to the music industry and over 30% of that came from user-generated content.

Chatterjee said, "As we look ahead, we think that the growth of the creative economy in the future, the next phase is going to come from creativity and also from finding new ways to make our creative community commercially successful."

He explained that when it comes to commercial success, the digital behavior of Indians continues to evolve and as more and more Indians participate in online commerce, new business models will emerge.

As content creation evolves and consumer watching patterns change, YouTube is also trying to keep up with the trends.

Giving a sneak peek into the future, Chatterjee said, "YouTube will continue to offer more opportunities for creators to monetize their content outside of ads by expanding our subscriptions business, by investing in shopping, and by continually expanding our fan-funded monetization options."

Ishan Chatterjee, Managing Director, YouTube India spoke at FICCI FRAMES 2023 in a session titled 'Media Mastermind: Building the Future of the Creator Economy in India.'