Deepash Jain on How Myntra Is Building an Always-On Income Model for Micro-Creators

MUMBAI: As social platforms increasingly become the place where shopping journeys begin, Myntra is rethinking who gets to be a creator and how they get rewarded. With monetisation opening up to users with no minimum follower count, affiliate commissions of up to 15%, and a 3X commission push for the Big Fashion Festival, the fashion platform is betting on millions of everyday shoppers, not just a handful of high-reach influencers, to drive discovery and sales. Leading this shift is Deepash Jain, VP, Marketing, Myntra. In this conversation with Indian Television, he explains how Myntra measures conversion potential beyond follower counts, keeps recommendations authentic, and builds sustainable income for creators well after sale periods end. He also discusses how narrative-led content and user-generated content are blurring the line between brand building and performance.

1. How does opening monetization on Meta to users with zero follower counts change the ROI logic for affiliate marketing when moving from high-reach influencers to millions of Micro-nodes?

The fundamental ROI logic of affiliate marketing remains the same: the creator is rewarded for the commerce outcome they drive, rather than simply the size of their audience.

This is different from traditional brand partnerships, where brands typically pay an upfront fee for access to an influencer’s reach. Affiliate commerce creates a performance-linked model, where commissions are tied to direct measurable impact.

Opening this up to creators with small follower bases democratises that opportunity significantly. Instead of relying on a relatively small pool of high-reach influencers, brands and platforms can enable millions of micro-nodes to participate in commerce. Each individual creator may have a smaller audience, but collectively they create a much broader network of relevant, contextual recommendations.

The shift, therefore, is from buying reach to enabling performance at scale

2. How is Myntra evaluating a user’s conversion potential if typical engagement metrics like follower count is removed from the equation?

For affiliate commerce, follower count is not the primary metric for conversion. What matters is the commerce outcome a creator can generate.

We look at signals such as orders generated, sessions, engagement with the content and ultimately the conversion that happens through the creator’s recommendation. A creator with a smaller but highly relevant community can therefore have significant conversion potential.

That is also why our aim is to democratise affiliate commerce. It allows us to move beyond the traditional definition of influence, where follower count was often used as a proxy for reach, and instead focus on whether a creator can drive meaningful discovery and action.

3. When every regular shopper becomes a potential affiliate earning up to 15% commission, how do you prevent social media feeds from feeling like relentless ad channels while keeping recommendations authentic?

The opportunity in creator commerce is not to turn every social interaction into an advertisement. It is to make product recommendations a natural extension of content that people already want to consume.

Personalisation plays an important role here. Social feeds are increasingly tailored to individual interests, so the content a consumer sees is influenced by what they engage with and what is relevant to them. For creators, the strongest opportunity is similarly, to share products that genuinely fit their content and audience rather than simply push products for the sake of earning a commission.

The commercial model should reward relevance, not volume. When the recommendation is contextual and comes from a creator or shopper whose taste the audience relates to, commerce can become part of the content experience rather than interrupting it.

4. With the 3X Commission incentive for the Big Fashion Festival, how are you designing tools to lower friction for creators cross-posting content across Myntra Ultimate Glam Clan, off-app communities, and social platforms without losing platform-native appeal?

The biggest opportunity is to make the journey from content creation to commerce as frictionless as possible.

We are building tools that allow creators to take the products they are already featuring and share them across their communities without having to recreate the entire commerce experience each time. For instance, templatised sharing formats can automatically surface the relevant product information, making it easier for creators to turn content into shoppable recommendations.

The objective is not to make every platform look the same. It is to give creators the flexibility to retain the language and format that works natively on each platform, while making the underlying commerce journey seamless.

During moments like the Big Fashion Festival, incentives such as 3X commissions can further encourage creators to activate their communities, but the long-term opportunity is to make this behaviour easy enough to continue beyond a sale event.

5. Does sending traffic through external social platforms via product tagging on Meta, Google, and YouTube drive net-new user acquisition, or does it shift shoppers away from discovering products inside the Myntra app directly?

We see social platforms as an extension of the discovery ecosystem rather than a substitute for discovery within Myntra.

Consumer behaviour has changed significantly. Shopper’s discovery is largely influenced by creator content on social platforms, before they open an e-commerce app and start searching for a product.

That creates an opportunity for Myntra to meet consumers where discovery is already happening. Product tagging and affiliate integrations across platforms such as Meta and YouTube allow a piece of content to become a direct bridge between inspiration and commerce.

This is particularly relevant beyond the largest metros, where platforms such as Facebook and YouTube have significant penetration. By taking Myntra’s fashion discovery ecosystem into these environments, we can reach consumers who may not have been actively looking for a product on Myntra in the first place.

So the ambition is not simply to shift an existing Myntra shopper from one channel to another. It is to expand the number of places where a consumer can discover Myntra and create opportunities for incremental, net-new journeys into the platform.

6. How is Myntra testing narrative-led content like microdramas to drive immediate checkout intent rather than traditional product-centric reels?

We don’t see narrative-led formats such as microdramas as a replacement for product-led content. They serve a different role in the funnel.

A product reel can be highly effective when the objective is to showcase a product, communicate its features or drive consideration. A microdrama or narrative-led format can work further upstream by creating entertainment, cultural relevance and top-of-mind awareness.

For a fashion platform, that is important because not every shopping journey begins with an intent to purchase. Sometimes the consumer first needs to be inspired.

The opportunity is therefore to build a connected content ecosystem where different formats serve different objectives – from entertainment and awareness to discovery, consideration and ultimately commerce. The role of narrative-led content is to make Myntra and fashion part of the conversation before the consumer even starts actively shopping.

7. What structural systems is Myntra putting in place to build a predictable, sustainable income baseline for non-mega creators long after sale periods like BFF end?

The creator economy is evolving from a discovery-led ecosystem into one that influences the entire shopping journey, from inspiration and consideration to purchase. The next phase of this evolution will be defined by how effectively we translate that influence into meaningful, sustained income opportunities for creators.

Buyers are increasingly gravitating towards peer to peer reviews and opinions. Today, creator-led commerce generates significantly higher conversion rates and noticeably lower return rates because real consumers see how products look, fit, and perform on real bodies. At Myntra our focus is to adopt an always on approach and drive it forward by:

• Giving every shopper the opportunity to be a creator: You no longer need a large follower base to participate in the creator economy. Through Myntra’s Ultimate Glam Clan (UGC) ecosystem, everyday shoppers can create content and unlock affiliate opportunities.
• Performance & commission-based monetization: The economy is shifting away from flat-fee brand deals toward affiliate-backed, sales-linked models. Creators who build high-intent communities are building sustainable, recurring income streams.

8. How has the line between pure performance/conversion and brand building blurred now that user-generated content acts as both the top-of-funnel discovery tool and the final transaction trigger?

The funnel has become much more interconnected. Today, the same piece of creator content can introduce a consumer to a brand, build consideration and potentially trigger a transaction.

That does not mean every piece of content needs to perform every role. Different creator formats and voices can serve different objectives.

At the top of the funnel, KOLs and established creators can play an important role in building aspiration, cultural relevance and brand love. Further down the funnel, UGC and creator-led product content can bring greater relatability and context to the shopping decision—showing how something looks, fits or works in a real-life setting.

What has changed is that these layers no longer operate in isolation. A consumer can discover a trend through one creator, see it validated by another shopper, and then purchase through a creator’s recommendation.

For us, creator commerce is therefore not simply a performance marketing channel. It is becoming part of a connected discovery-to-commerce ecosystem, where brand building and conversion can reinforce each other.

Jain’s responses point to a clear direction for Myntra’s creator strategy: moving from buying reach to enabling performance at scale, with relevance and relatability valued over sheer follower numbers. By meeting consumers where discovery already happens, from Meta and YouTube to the Ultimate Glam Clan community, and by making the path from content to checkout as seamless as possible, Myntra aims to turn creator influence into an always-on commerce engine. If that approach works, the beneficiaries would include not only the platform and its brand partners but also a much wider base of creators earning steady income from their taste and recommendations.