YouTube's commerce-driven features could significantly boost earnings for creators in India, Gautam Anand, Managing Director of YouTube Asia Pacific, told Moneycontrol in an interview.
"I see tremendous opportunities in commerce and shopping, brand deals, and fan-funding products like Memberships, Super Chat, and Super Thanks. If you take that suite of revenue-generating capabilities, it gives me a lot of confidence that we can truly support creators, whether they're seeking fame, fortune, or both" Anand said on the sidelines of World Audio Video Entertainment Summit 2025 (WAVES 2025) in Mumbai.
Anand, who also serves as vice-president of YouTube Asia-Pacific, anticipates Indian creators will be at the "forefront of experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) tools" as the Google-owned video platform accelerates its generative AI efforts.
In recent years, YouTube has introduced new AI-powered creator tools and integrated AI capabilities into its existing creator tools. This includes providing ideas and inspiration for video creation, editing, dubbing, and generating backgrounds and video clips on the fly, among other features.
"India is incredibly rich in storytelling, and the diversity and depth of these stories may not always be possible (to fully capture for creators). AI can enhance this by enabling creators to tell these stories without having to worry about challenges like finding the right shooting location," Anand explained.
While it is still early days, he believes the combination of creators and AI will bring the heritage and richness of the stories in the country to life.
Focus on video commerce efforts
YouTube had partnered with Walmart-owned e-commerce players Flipkart and Myntra to extend its online shopping affiliate service to India in September 2024.
Eligible content creators on YouTube can tag and promote products in their videos, allowing viewers to purchase items through links to Flipkart and Myntra. Creators earn a commission on each sale, calculated based on the product price, excluding any delivery fees.
"It's still very early days, since we only launched it toward the end of last year, but we've exceeded our Q1 targets and there's still huge room to grow," Anand said. "I think this is an area we will really prove out from the Asia Pacific region."
YouTube recently appointed Gunjan Soni to lead its India operations. Soni comes with a strong background in online commerce, having served for six years in Singapore as Group CEO of Zalora, a prominent Asian fashion and lifestyle e-commerce retailer.
She also spent three years at Flipkart-owned online fashion platform Myntra, where she held multiple roles, first as Chief Marketing Officer and later as Head of Jabong.
YouTube's growing subscription business
Anand is also bullish about the growth of YouTube's subscription business in the region. Last month, YouTube announced that it crossed 125 million paid members across the world, up from 100 million in 2024. The company shares a portion of the subscription fees with creators, based on how much their content is watched by Premium members.
On May 5, Moneycontrol exclusively reported that YouTube is testing a new subscription tier with select users in India, France, Taiwan, and Hong Kong that lets them share their Premium or Music Premium membership with another household member.
YouTube is also getting more actively involved in facilitating connections between creators and brands, as branded content is becoming increasingly important and more advertisers are shifting their budgets into social media and brand partnerships, Anand said.
During the WAVES 2025 event, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced an investment of Rs 850 crore over the next two years to further accelerate the growth of India's burgeoning creator economy. He also said that the Google-owned platform has paid over Rs 21,000 crore to Indian creators, artists, and media companies in the last three years.
"Today, India isn't just a world leader for film and music – it's rapidly becoming what I'm excited to call a “Creator Nation.”" Mohan said during his speech at the event.
Anand said in the interview that that much of the investment will go towards "events and engagements that aim to help more people understand how they can be successful on YouTube, as well as continuing to build out the overall monetisation engine"
India is YouTube's largest market, with over half a billion users. It is also a crucial region for the platform's future growth.
Over 100 million channels have uploaded content in India over the last year, and more than 15,000 of those channels have over 1 million subscribers, Mohan mentioned in his speech. He also said that content produced in India racked up 45 billion hours of watch time from viewers outside the country last year.
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