e-commerce
YouTube adds Nykaa and Purplle to shopping affiliate programme as beauty commerce booms
MU7MBAI: YouTube is turning beauty tutorials into storefronts. The video platform has added Nykaa and Purplle to its shopping affiliate programme, expanding creators’ ability to monetise content as shopping-related watch time in India jumps 250 per cent year-on-year.
The move doubles down on beauty and lifestyle, a category where 89 per cent of Indian shoppers say YouTube helps them make confident purchase decisions. Creators enrolled in the programme can now tag products from Nykaa and Purplle alongside existing partners Flipkart and Myntra, earning commissions when viewers buy.
More than 40 per cent of eligible creators in India have signed up since the programme launched a year ago, tagging products in over three million videos. Over 200 million logged-in users in India have made shopping-related searches on YouTube, creating what the platform calls a “complete monetisation ecosystem”.
“The next era of video commerce is already being defined by India’s vibrant creator economy on YouTube,” says YouTube India managing director Gunjan Soni. “We are scaling content-driven shopping from a successful programme to a complete monetisation ecosystem.”
YouTube is sweetening the deal with artificial intelligence tools that automatically tag products the moment they’re mentioned in videos, capturing viewer interest at its peak. The platform will also test automatic product identification later this year.
Flipkart vice president of growth and marketing Pratik Arun Shetty, frames the partnership as commerce meeting creativity. “India’s creator economy is transforming how people engage with brands,” he says. Myntra reports creator collaborations have grown threefold in the past year, whilst Nykaa positions itself as a pioneer in content-led commerce.
YouTube is also rolling out tools to make brand deals more lucrative: a flexible format for inserting and replacing sponsored segments, links to brand sites in Shorts, and a Creator Partnerships Hub inside Google Ads to connect advertisers with influencers.
It’s a bet that authenticity converts. Whether creators cash in or merely chase clicks will depend on whether viewers trust recommendations—or just skip to the comments.
e-commerce
Visa report tracks rise of India’s affluent, experience-led spending
Affluent base doubles to 130 lakh, travel 58 per cent of elite spends.
MUMBAI: In India’s new luxury playbook, it’s less about owning more and more about living better. A new whitepaper by Visa Consulting and Analytics (VCA) maps a decisive shift in India’s affluent economy, where spending is becoming more intentional, experience-led, and closely tied to personal identity rather than pure income growth.
Titled India’s Affluent Economy 2025–2026, the report draws on a Visa-commissioned Yougov study and VisaNet data across travel, dining, retail and lifestyle categories. The headline number is hard to miss: individuals earning over Rs 10 lakh annually have nearly doubled from 69 lakh to 130 lakh, significantly expanding the country’s discretionary spending base.
But it’s not just about scale, it’s about behaviour. As consumers move up the affluence ladder, discretionary categories are taking a larger share of credit card spends, positioning cards as key enablers of premium, lifestyle-driven consumption.
The geography of wealth is shifting too. Affluence is no longer confined to metros such as Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, with cities like Ahmedabad, Surat, Jaipur and Lucknow increasingly mirroring metro consumption patterns.
The report highlights a clear pivot from ownership to access. More than 50 per cent of affluent consumers now use cards for elite memberships, while 7 in 10 are drawn to limited-edition drops and curated collections. Increasingly, luxury is defined by seamless access be it concierge-led travel or curated dining where time saved is as valuable as money spent.
Spending patterns reinforce this shift. Among the ultra-elite, travel accounts for 58 per cent of discretionary spends, far outpacing retail and luxury combined at 28 per cent. Cross-border spending penetration stands at 63 per cent, signalling a growing global outlook among India’s affluent.
Closer home, indulgence is becoming routine. Nearly 4 in 5 affluent consumers dine at premium establishments at least three times a year, while 1 in 4 visit luxury venues more than five times annually. Dining spends are also climbing, with Rs 20,000 emerging as a new entry-level benchmark per experience and Rs 50,000 marking premium territory.
Retail, meanwhile, is becoming more selective. Three in four affluent consumers make a high-end purchase at least once a quarter, while one in four shops premium every two weeks. Luxury retail intensity is also rising, with 2 in 5 consumers spending over Rs 5 lakh annually, and a smaller but significant segment exceeding Rs 10 lakh.
Technology and wellness are carving out new roles in this ecosystem. High-end gadgets now see average spends of Rs 60,000 or more per purchase, while ultra-elite consumers are eight times more likely to visit spas and show five times higher engagement with cosmetic stores than non-affluent groups.
The broader takeaway is structural. Affluent consumers are no longer buying products, they are buying ecosystems. Integrated experiences across travel, dining, wellness and payments are becoming central to how this segment lives and spends.
As India’s affluent base expands beyond metros and aligns more closely with global consumption patterns, the real opportunity lies not just in size, but in speed. For brands, the message is clear: relevance will be defined by how early and how seamlessly, they plug into this evolving lifestyle economy.
