An Overview Of The Creator Economy: Challenges And Opportunities

Abhilash Bapanasha — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 13:00:12 +0000

The Creator Economy is built by influencers, vloggers, bloggers, writers, artists, and anyone else who monetise their knowledge, skills, or creations. The phenomenal rise of the internet over the last decade empowered ordinary individuals to create and publish their own content and hence share a story. In order to elucidate more on the opportunities in the Creator Economy space, we had Mr. Tamseel Hussain as the speaker for Innerview – a weekly live 45-minute motivational and inspirational talk show presented by Dutch Uncles which features interviews of industry experts who bring forth informative and life experiences and techniques.

Mr. Tamseel Hussain, the Founder and CEO of People Like Us Create TV (Pluc TV), has successfully built his bootstrapped startup from scratch and is now being used by more than thirty thousand creators. With over a decade of experience in boosting youth-led virtual narratives, Mr. Hussain is building storytelling and technology solutions for the age of the creator economy.

In brief, the session had the following takeaways:

What is the potential of the creator economy?
How can you become a successful creator?
How can creators produce and monetise their content?
What can be the impact of authentic storytelling?

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A lot of ideas are being funded if you have a high user base. But the most important thing is whether you are able to generate your own first revenue. It makes the fundraising journey easy for you.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

What will you suggest about getting funding to the aspiring young entrepreneurs?

It is really important to share your idea and build on it before you actually go to fundraise. If you are going for a fundraise, the trend that we are seeing right now especially in the Indian market is that a lot of ideas are being funded if you have a high user base. But the most important thing is whether you are able to generate your own first revenue. It makes the fundraising journey easy for you. Second, you should be able to solve a problem, people need to seek solutions and they need to come to your platform. Third, once you have actually solved the problem it is very important that you consistently solve that problem so that people keep coming back to you and these are three golden rules which really help.

Please suggest some action points which creative entrepreneurs can consider to design a robust social media marketing strategy.

The first thing we did was put everything on social media. Knowing what your product is, who your audiences are, it needs to be consistently directed through social media posts. Every platform works according to an algorithm, for example, right now reels than other types of content is really popular and you can see so many small businesses using it to the fullest of the advantage. At Pluc TV, we believe in organic growth and a paid social media marketing strategy only has limits. If you have a good story to tell and if you are hitting the right algorithm it grows faster. If you take the ad marketing or influencer marketing route, you are just ending up spending a lot of budget where if you notice your conversions are very low. I really think organic needs to be prioritised.

How do you think this creator economy space can be utilised and coordinated with sectors like Edtech, Agritech, Fintech?

You already see it happening – in edtech and agritech platforms, there is a massive demand for content creators. The biggest issue that the farming sector has, for example, is the amount of training they are given by existing methods which are traditional. It is very difficult for them to absorb it. They need training which helps them on the spot which is through the new agritech apps that are coming up. They are able to sell whatever they are producing in the best way possible and this is where content creators are coming up. We are going to see a rising trend of experts especially after the pandemic really controlling the narrative when it comes to important subjects that are related to edtech and agritech platforms.

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We believe in organic growth and a paid social media marketing strategy only has limits. If you have a good story to tell and if you are hitting the right algorithm, it grows faster.

Audience Asks:

As a part of this creator community where should our focus be – competing or collaborating with each other? How to decide one of the approaches considering that we all are trying to increase our followers?

I think this trend is about competition and having a massive follower base. You would be more interested in collaborating because it actually helps you build your followers as well. We have seen tools that have been added by various platforms on collaborative lines and with all these things it really helps you build your follower base. So, I think collaboration is definitely the way to go. But if you are really thinking of competing that means you are again falling into the trap of competition which is being forced by a social media algorithm because they have created a trend. Find your niche, find your authenticity – you can still create a trend but in your own way which helps you grow faster.

What factors to take care of while pitching for funding to investors?

The most important thing is there is a format of a pitch deck which should have an end to end information from what your idea is, what problem your idea is solving, what is the USP of your product, how many users you have, how you are going to make it something which is going to differentiate. There are apps and platforms like DocSend which really help you to track analytics and actually see who is viewing your pitch deck when. Once people are interested in your pitch deck, you as a founder should be able to say that you are the right person to do it and really scale the company into something massive. Do not fill your pitch text with a lot of text, instead make it simple for anyone to understand.

The five-crore independent content creator community

As Mr. Hussain explained that while the interest and passion to be a storyteller is on the rise, it is equally vital to choose platforms which have an existing user base. You need to make sure to create keeping in mind the algorithm of the platforms so that there is an optimal transformation and influence. This class of businesses as seen today, is built by over five crore independent content creators, curators, and community builders including social media influencers, bloggers, and videographers, in addition to the software and finance tools designed to help them with growth and monetisation.

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Creator Economy: A New Breed of Entertainment

Shalmoli Sarkar — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 02:35:02 +0000

It was during the year 2000 when our television sets were largely dominated by Saas-Bahu soaps that kept Indian audiences glued to it. The shows were aired at 8 pm that ran for several years and completed episodes nearing 2000. In those times, a teenager who had just stopped watching Cartoon Network had no other choice but was left to watch the daily soaps with family. The age group of 15-25 years remained largely untapped since the entertainment content catering to them was largely absent. The advent of inexpensive internet plans, affordable smartphones, short-form video apps like TikTok and Dailyhunt’s Josh, and the addition of video features on social media platforms like reel, FB live, YouTube live on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube respectively have changed the course of entertainment that has given birth to independent content creators, even from the rural parts of India as well. The emergence of such platforms has given the millennials and Gen Z to be vocal about experiences, knowledge, and opinion. Right from entertainment, education, DIY tips, gaming to news, the creator economy has personalized content that caters to the audience of various interests and motivations.

This boom in the creator economy has now emerged to be a career option for many Gen Z and millennials since many big brands are collaborating with the creators.

The future of the creator economy seems to be bright in India since it is expected that the number of internet users will touch a user base of 974 million by 2025. An average Indian spends around 17 hours on such platforms each week, which confirms its popularity.

The popularity in the creator economy can be attributed to the below reasons:

Easy creation of visual content using a smartphone
The duration of videos being short: an average of 15 seconds to 3 min which is easier to consume.
Hyper-customized content delivery
Multiple modes of creative expression
The minimalist vertical video feed, since 94% of the viewers hold their phone upright to which vertical videos occupy the entire screen grabbing viewer’s undivided attention

The content from the creator’s economy is based on the following facets:

DIY or tutorial content

This content genre has witnessed immense popularity in the pandemic as out-of-home consumption reached an all-time low. Creators turned to create content that could help people do tasks on their own. For instance, cutting your hair yourself, create masks from your T-shirt, work from home makeup hacks, fashion hacks, etc.

Entertainment

Indian population majorly comprises Gen Z that likes to consume and create short videos. Other than YouTube, short-form video apps like TikTok for their easy-to-use features and localized content were largely successful in developing content creators from tier-II, III, IV, and V cities. Though, the app was banned but, the creator economy being a lucrative one, led Dailyhunt’s Josh a short-form video app, an alternative to TikTok to raise a funding of $100 billion through a series H round from Qatar Investment Authority. Local language support is one of the key highlights of Josh, it currently supports 12 Indian languages. Josh currently has 77 million users per month and has over 1.5 billion video plays per day.

Collaboration with brands

Brands that are big or small are now collaborating with content creators on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook because of their fan following and authentic content creation.

Creating community

Human beings have an affinity to be in groups where there is a sense of belonging. From lifestyle to social commerce, and from health and fitness to mental wellness, users on most of these homegrown platforms are engaging and interacting with content that caters to their specific interests.

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Creator economy – Dutch Uncles