The influencer ecosystem has been gaining importance in India: they’re better than most media and experts at understanding consumer needs and packaging their content. Many of them are experts at what they do. They monetize their work through advertisements, product placements, and subscription based premium content or advisory models.
They thus replicate many of the functions of media publications.
I was on News9 to discuss a few controversies around the financial influencer space, now referred to as “finfluencers”, and frankly, as long as they don’t play in a regulated space such as stock advisory services, without the required regulatory certification/registration/license met, I think they’re providing an important service of financial education.
I also spoke about the upcoming Digital India Bill in the first part of the show.
More in the video:
Some points from my pre-show preparation about the Digital India Bill:
- I’d be surprised if the digital India bill is tabled in 15 days. Mr Chandrasekhar a month and half ago said it will be put up for public consultation on June 7th. The dates have been pushed.
- Very dangerous for Startup India, if safe harbor is removed. Majority of Indian and global companies will not be able to survive
- The IT Act amendments in 2008, and subsequent court proceedings gave us several freedoms and we should not lose them.
- I hope we don’t see the revival of 66A
- Sectoral regulation will hurt innovation: companies take time to find product market fit.