YouTube’s creator ecosystem contributed greater than Rs 18,000 crore to India’s GDP in 2025 and supported the equal of over 960,000 full-time jobs, in response to the Google-owned video platform’s 2025 India Impression Report.

The report, based mostly on analysis by financial consulting agency Oxford Economics, was launched on Tuesday on the YouTube Impression Summit 2026 in New Delhi.

Within the earlier report, overlaying 2024, YouTube’s ecosystem was estimated to have added over Rs 16,000 crore to GDP and supported greater than 930,000 full-time equal (FTE) jobs. That places the year-on-year rise at roughly 12% in GDP contribution and about 3% in jobs.

The roles counted embrace cinematographers, sound engineers, scriptwriters and different manufacturing employees, YouTube stated.

How the numbers have moved since 2020

Oxford Economics’ first India examine, printed in March 2022, estimated that YouTube’s creator ecosystem contributed Rs 6,800 crore to India’s GDP and supported 6,83,900 FTE jobs in 2020.

On these figures, the ecosystem’s estimated GDP contribution has grown greater than two and a half instances in 5 years, whereas the job estimate has risen by roughly 40%.

The variety of YouTube channels in India making six figures or extra in rupee income rose by over 30% year-on-year, the report stated.

Amongst creators incomes cash from the platform, 73% stated YouTube was their major supply of revenue, up from almost two-thirds within the report overlaying 2024. The report additionally stated 93% of creators with a profession in media or leisure began that profession on YouTube.

Indian channels uploaded greater than 160 million hours of content material previously yr. Greater than 15% of watch time on content material made by Indian channels got here from viewers exterior India, and 81% of media firms with a YouTube channel stated the platform helped them attain new audiences world wide.

The report cited Marathi singer Sanju Rathod, whose music “Gulabi Sadi” crossed 500 million views, for example of regional-language content material travelling overseas.

Work past the creator

Creators incomes cash on YouTube supported greater than 300,000 apprentices previously yr, in response to the report. It stated creators are hiring video editors, digicam operators and scriptwriters, and pointed to artistic clusters rising in non-metro cities reminiscent of Jaipur, Lucknow and Kochi.

It gave the instance of SimpleGhar, a product overview channel that began in late 2022 with one digicam in a transformed residence studio and has since grown right into a media firm with a 35-member full-time crew producing content material in seven languages.

Amongst small and medium-sized companies with a YouTube channel, 73% stated their presence on the platform helped them develop their enterprise past YouTube.

YouTube framed the figures as a part of India’s “Orange Economic system”, a artistic economic system constructed round content material, creativity and tradition, and linked it to the federal government’s Viksit Bharat aim.

Rising creator increase

The report lands as India’s creator base grows shortly. A report by the Indian School of Business and Hashfame, launched in July 2026, discovered that the variety of creators in India rose greater than fourfold, from about 0.96 million in 2020 to 4.12 million in 2025. That examine discovered 66% of creators now come from non-metro markets.

Common creator engagement rose from 1.8% to 7.2% over the identical interval, and annual model campaigns with creators elevated from about 14,000 to 42,000.

“The extra vital problem now could be enabling creators to construct sustainable companies,” stated Madhu Viswanathan of ISB.

Youngster security in focus

YouTube additionally used the report to focus on its safeguards for youthful customers, a day after the Supreme Court docket took up the query of minors on social media.

On 28 September, a Bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant, listening to a public curiosity litigation filed by the Simply Rights for Kids Alliance, requested the Centre to look at statutory safeguards for customers beneath 18. These embrace whether or not platforms needs to be stopped from letting minors independently create accounts, and whether or not parental consent or age verification needs to be required.

“Tips are mere pointers. It needs to be in some statutory format,” Justice Joymalya Bagchi stated.

Solicitor Normal Tushar Mehta instructed the court docket the Centre would amend the IT Guidelines to make it a statutory obligation for platforms to stop customers underneath 18 from creating accounts.

Individually, underneath the Digital Private Information Safety Guidelines notified in November 2025, platforms will want verifiable parental consent to course of the info of anybody underneath 18 from 13 Might 2027.

YouTube stated its merchandise are “age-appropriate by design”, pointing to YouTube Children, supervised accounts and parental controls.

In response to the report, 74% of fogeys who use the platform contemplate YouTube or YouTube Children for youngsters underneath 13 vital to their youngsters’s discovery of the world. It additionally cited an August 2025 survey by Ipsos in India, wherein 92% of fogeys of 10 to 17-year-olds who had used supervised-account instruments agreed that the content material their little one considered was acceptable for his or her age.

YouTube stated it should deal with three areas in India, together with AI-powered creation instruments, ecosystem partnerships and accountable AI. The instruments embrace conversational AI enhancing in Shorts and agentic channel administration by Ask Studio.

Partnerships embrace a skilling programme known as Create with AI, run with the Ministry of Info and Broadcasting and the Indian Institute of Artistic Applied sciences. On accountable AI, the corporate pointed to AI Likeness Detection, which is supposed to offer creators extra management over their digital presence.

The plans construct on commitments made by YouTube CEO Neal Mohan on the WAVES summit in Mumbai in Might 2025, the place he said YouTube had paid greater than Rs 21,000 crore to creators, artists and media firms in India over the earlier three years, and would make investments over Rs 850 crore within the following two years to speed up their development.