YouTube Creative Ecosystem Contributed Rs 6,800cr In 2020: Study

YouTube is not just a cash cow for its parent company Google. The video streaming giant also has a huge socio-economic impact in India. According to Analysis by Oxford Economics, YouTube creative ecosystem contributed Rs 6,800 crore to the Indian economy in 2020 and supported 6,83,900 jobs.

The study titled 'A Platform For Indian Opportunity' notes that YouTube helps people in India learn new skills, share their passions, enrich their lives, and grow their businesses. "It helps provide a stepping stone to achieving better productivity, employability, and higher incomes, thus making a meaningful impact in the lives of millions of Indians," it added.

It also noted that the growing YouTube community generates a huge amount of economic value in India—not just for creators but also for businesses, employees, and consumers across the country.

"A principal source of YouTube’s economic impact is the revenue the platform redistributes to its creators, which can include ad sales, payouts from eight alternative monetisation features such as channel memberships and Super Chat, and royalty payments paid to music and media companies," it stated.

As per the study, creators spend money on goods and services in their supply chains while producing content for YouTube. This also stimulates an indirect economic impact. "In turn, creators and other employees of YouTube’s creative ecosystem, or its supply chain (including video editors, graphic designers, producers etc.), go on to spend their earnings. This activity creates a further induced economic impact in the economy. "

The study has also estimated the revenues that YouTube creators earn from other sources are stimulated by their YouTube presence. "This includes increased product sales, brand partnerships, or live performance engagements. These “off-platform” revenues create a catalytic impact on the economy, stimulating additional indirect and induced impacts through supply chain activity and wage expenditure."

The study mentions that India has over 40,000 channels with over 1 lakh subscribers, an increase of over 45%, year over year. "YouTube helps businesses grow their customer base, and make their employees more productive with easy access to information and training materials

According to the study, creative entrepreneurs are creators that meet at least one of the following criteria, i) Earn income directly from YouTube and/or wider income helped by their YouTube presence, ii) Permanently hire paid employees to work on their channel, iii) Have more than 10,000 subscribers to their largest channel.