The Emergence of New Creator Class in India

What began as a largely informal and fragmented creator ecosystem in India is now evolving into a structured employment sector. 

According to a report from Indeed, creator-related job postings surged 919% between 2020 and early 2026, reflecting a shift by companies from one-off influencer collaborations to dedicated in-house creator and content teams.

The report found that creator-focused roles, which represented roughly 1 in 1,000 marketing jobs in 2020, now account for nearly 1 in 100 marketing-related openings nationwide. 

The trend highlights how content creation, community engagement, and digital storytelling are becoming core business functions rather than peripheral marketing activities.

Recognising the growing importance of the creator economy and the rising demand for technology-enabled creative talent, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB), in partnership with the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT), has announced 15,000 scholarships to train young professionals in artificial intelligence. 

The programme will focus on high-growth sectors such as media, entertainment, gaming, animation, visual effects (VFX), and digital content creation. Supported by global technology companies including Google and YouTube, the initiative seeks to address the growing skills gap emerging as AI reshapes creative industries. 

The ministry will offer specialised training modules, mentorship opportunities, access to advanced tools, and hands-on learning experiences designed to prepare participants for AI-enabled creative workflows.

The move comes as organisations increasingly seek professionals who can combine creative capabilities with technical fluency.

Despite the rapid expansion of India’s influencer ecosystem, the report noted that demand for structured creator roles is outpacing the available talent pool, creating a widening skills gap across the sector.

Creator Economy Becoming More AI-Driven

In a discussion with AIM, Nipun Sharma, CEO of TeamLease, remarked that the programme exemplifies a broader transformation in how employers assess talent in the digital and creative industries.

"Industry-led AI skilling initiatives are critical in building a future-ready creative workforce because they align learning directly with how work is evolving," Sharma says.

He notes that the creator economy is no longer driven solely by content production.

He stated that the creator economy today is no longer just about content but involves combining creativity with technology, data, and platform understanding. His data shows that hiring is becoming increasingly capability-led, with employers prioritising digital fluency, AI awareness, and content-tech integration even in entry-level roles.

Sharma argues that involving platforms such as Google and YouTube can significantly improve the relevance of training programmes by exposing learners to real-world tools and workflows.

"When platforms like Google and YouTube are involved, training reflects real tools, workflows, and audience dynamics,” he says, arguing that it reduces the gap between learning and employability, enabling creators to move from content production to scalable, monetisable digital careers."

The initiative also highlights how AI is becoming embedded across multiple stages of content creation, from ideation and production to audience engagement and analytics.

"This initiative clearly signals that AI is becoming fundamental to the creator economy, not optional," Sharma says. “Content creation is increasingly being augmented by AI across editing, scripting, localisation, analytics, and audience targeting."

He states that companies are increasingly looking for professionals with hybrid skills that span creativity and technology.

"Our data indicates that sectors linked to digital content, marketing, and platform-based services are seeing sustained hiring momentum, with employers actively seeking hybrid skill sets that combine creativity with technology."

He adds that the institutionalisation of AI-focused training programmes indicates that AI-enabled creativity is transitioning from a niche employability requirement to a mainstream one.

Why Course Design Matters

While experts broadly welcomed the scholarship programme, some cautioned that access alone will not guarantee meaningful outcomes.

Samyak Chakrabarty, co-founder, Nimaya, a nonprofit that equips young women from underserved communities with GenAI and creator-economy skills, tells AIM that the quality and structure of AI education will ultimately determine whether the initiative succeeds.

"I think that scholarships on paper are a fantastic idea, and access to the availability of AI training is very important," he states.

However, he warns against treating AI education as a collection of basic prompting exercises.

"AI is a big word, right? He suggests. So it's really important that the courses that they're getting the scholarship for are properly curated, because merely learning ChatGPT or anybody else giving a course on AI is not really teaching fundamentals of how to build an intuitive relationship with AI."

Chakrabarty states that AI technologies are evolving too rapidly for static skills training to remain effective.

"The people who will be poised to most successfully use it will actually understand it as an entity that they are working with, or they are making them do their work," he says. 

Building Long-Term AI Literacy

Chakrabarty further stresses that understanding how AI systems operate is more important than simply learning how to issue prompts.

"If you just do these random prompting courses, but if you don't know how AI imagines, how can you imagine what you want it to do for you?," he states.

Summarising his view on the initiative, he says that democratising access remains valuable, but curriculum design will be the real differentiator.

On paper, giving scholarships for courses that teach AI is great at democratising access, but one cannot fully say it will bridge the gap of exposure because the curation and design of the courses is more important than the fact that they're free.

The scholarship programme is one of the government's largest AI-focused skilling initiatives, specifically targeted at the creative industries. 

As AI tools become deeply integrated into content production, digital storytelling, gaming, animation, and media workflows, policymakers and industry leaders increasingly view AI literacy as a critical employability skill.

The success of the initiative may ultimately depend on whether it can move beyond tool-based training and create a generation of creators capable of combining creativity, technological understanding, and critical thinking in an AI-driven economy.