What prompted the IPO?

It was about validating the creator economy as a serious investable sector in India. India is one of the fastest growing creative markets in the world. We have 80-100 million creators today. But monetisation per creator is still kind of a fraction of the global benchmark. So the gap between scale and monetisation is where the opportunity really lies for me and the company. The space has largely been fragmented and unstructured. Being public brings in some discipline, transparency and long-term thinking.

The latest ASCI report on annual complaints mentions the spread of misleading ads on digital media, especially through influencers, and how this makes identification difficult. How can the industry fix this?

The ASCI report is an uncomfortable but necessary reading. A 21 per cent surge in cases, 97.3 per cent of violations on digital platforms, and 1,609 influencer ads flagged, with nearly all requiring modification... this isn’t a compliance blip. It’s a structural failure.

The core problem is the ‘speed-first, compliance-later’ culture of digital advertising. By the time a violation is flagged and taken down, the content has already reached millions through creator networks, affiliate chains and messaging groups. Post-publication correction is not a compliance strategy, it’s damage control.

Fixing this requires three things. First, compliance must move upstream, and claims must be vetted before content goes live, not after. Second, influencer onboarding must include compliance literacy as standard. The fact that 76 per cent of India’s top creators have been flagged tells us this is an education problem, not just an intent problem. Third, technology needs to do the heavy lifting — AI-powered, real-time content scanning is the only way to operate at the scale and speed the digital ecosystem demands.

The advertiser community, too, cannot absolve itself. Restricted-category brands don’t place illegal ads without demand-side enablers. Accountability must run across the entire chain — brands, intermediaries and platforms alike.

Brands are demanding formal revenue targets from influencer campaigns. Has this led to rate rationalisation?

The shift to performance-linked influencer marketing is real, significant and, yes, it has created friction. When a creator who has built his or her rate card on follower count is suddenly asked to justify fees against conversion data and cannot, the relationship breaks down. We’re seeing this particularly with mid-to-large creators who haven’t yet built the commerce infrastructure — affiliate links, shoppable content, conversion funnels — that performance briefs now demand.

But rate rationalisation is more nuanced than a blanket correction. What’s actually happening is a market bifurcation. Creators who can demonstrate clear revenue impact are commanding higher fees than ever. Those who relied on vanity metrics are facing compression. The market is simply repricing influence on the basis of proof.

For platforms like Chtrbox, this shift is largely healthy — it forces rigour into campaign design and elevates the category. But there’s a real risk of overcorrection. Influencer content shapes consideration, builds brand preference and drives discovery well before the point of purchase. Forcing everything into a last-click attribution model will systematically undervalue that contribution. The smarter brands are moving toward blended measurement — combining platform data, lift studies and CRM (customer relationship management) signals. That’s where the industry needs to go collectively.

Performance accountability and short-termism are not the same thing. The best influencer partnerships are long-form and brand-building. Reducing every campaign to a cost-per-acquisition target may improve quarterly attribution numbers but risks eroding the brand equity that made those conversions possible.

How are AI influencers doing? Are more brands using them?

AI influencers are definitely emerging. But as someone who’s seen the industry from day zero, I would say AI influencers will never replace human creators. They’re expanding what’s possible in the creator economy. But the authenticity and community factor that a real creator brings cannot come from an AI creator.

What we can do as a company is have a mix of AI-led storytelling opportunities, so brands can affordably create content that is snackable and good to look at. But, at the same time, we want to be cognisant of how the human influencers are also being positioned.