For decades, celebrity status was relatively easy to identify. Film stars, cricketers, television personalities and musicians occupied that space, their fame shaped by institutions that controlled access to audiences. Social media changed that equation entirely, giving rise to a new class of public figures whose reach often rivals mainstream celebrities but whose influence is built very differently.
Now, India’s market regulator may have offered one of its clearest definitions yet.
Under SEBI’s proposed Common Advertisement Code (CAC), influencers with more than five lakh followers on a social media platform could be classified as “celebrities” for financial advertising. The proposal brings creators into the same regulatory bucket as actors, athletes and television personalities, subjecting them to similar endorsement restrictions and approval requirements.
The move is part of SEBI’s broader attempt to tighten oversight of financial advertising and curb misleading promotions, particularly as finfluencers and digital creators increasingly shape investment decisions at scale. Yet, in trying to create a workable compliance framework, the proposal has also reopened a much larger question: can celebrity in the digital age really be measured by follower count alone?
To understand how brands, agencies and creator platforms are thinking about the issue, Marketing Mind spoke to industry players across the creator ecosystem. Their responses reveal broad agreement on one thing, while influence today is undeniable, defining celebrity has become far more complicated.
Why 5 Lakh Followers Doesn’t Automatically Make Someone a Celebrity
For many in the industry, the five-lakh benchmark is best understood as a regulatory necessity rather than a cultural statement.
Prakhar Srivastava, Vice President-Financial Planning and Corporate Strategy at White Rivers Media, calls it “a workable proxy for reach, not a cultural statement.” He argues that regulators need a threshold that can be enforced consistently, even if influence itself is far more nuanced.
Ritesh Ujjwal, Co-Founder of Kofluence, agrees. “Engagement quality, audience authenticity and category authority are commercially decisive, but none of them are independently auditable by a regulator,” he said. In his view, follower count may be imperfect, but it remains one of the few publicly visible and verifiable metrics.
The industry’s definition of celebrity, however, looks very different.
“In the Indian creator economy, a creator with 5 lakh followers is generally classified as a macro-influencer, not a celebrity,” claimed Sneh Chedda, Associate Vice President at Schbang Fluence. He adds that celebrity status usually comes with broader cultural recognition and influence that extends beyond a platform.
Rajni Daswani, Chief Growth Officer-People & Business at SoCheers, echoes that view. A creator with five lakh followers has meaningful reach, she says, but the industry generally reserves the celebrity tag for those with significantly larger audiences and sustained cultural relevance.
Follower count, people argue, is increasingly becoming a vanity metric.
“Someone with 2 lakh highly engaged followers may deliver far greater business impact than someone with 20 lakh passive followers,” noted Sahil Chopra, Founder and CEO of iCubesWire. The real measure of influence, he argues, lies in what audiences do after consuming content.
From Gatekept Fame to Algorithmic Trust: How Celebrity Has Evolved
The disagreement over follower count stems from a much larger shift in how fame itself is created.
“A decade ago, fame was built on scarcity and gatekeeping,” noted Chedda. “Celebrities were distant, aspirational and mediated by traditional PR and legacy media. Today, fame is built on accessibility and community.”
Sonam Bhagat, Founder-CEO of Vygr News Network, says celebrity was once largely defined by institutional gatekeepers. Today, audiences themselves decide who deserves influence and recognition.
That shift has created an entirely new kind of public figure.
Unlike traditional celebrities, creators build their influence through repeated interactions, direct engagement and perceived authenticity. Their followers are not merely audiences; they are communities.
“Celebrity today is about trust, not size,” said Kalyan Kumar, Co-Founder and CEO of KlugKlug. A film star, he notes, could disappear from social media and still remain a celebrity, while many creators derive their influence entirely from the communities they have built online.
Chopra believes this has fundamentally altered how brands think about influence. Niche creators with smaller but deeply engaged communities are increasingly driving stronger outcomes than personalities with far larger followings.
Bhagat agrees. Influence today, she says, is less about broad visibility and more about meaningful connection and credibility within a community.
Regulatory Parity: Creators Are Now Being Held to Celebrity Standards
Even if the industry doesn’t consider five lakh followers enough to confer celebrity status, most agree that creators today possess enough influence to warrant greater accountability.
Srivastava sees the proposal as an extension of the same compliance architecture that already applies to film stars and athletes.
Chedda says the move acknowledges that creators have become powerful enough to shape financial decisions and are therefore being held to “the exact same stringent accountability standards” as traditional celebrities.
Daswani believes creators now hold “a comparable level of influence in certain contexts,” sometimes even more than mainstream celebrities because their relationships with audiences feel more direct and personal.
Ujjwal says the proposal is less about who is more famous and more about who has the ability to influence decisions at scale.
Bhagat sees a symbolic shift as well. By putting creators and traditional celebrities under the same framework, regulators are effectively acknowledging that digital influence has become too powerful to remain outside the rulebook.
The distinction, several people point out, lies in the nature of the endorsement. Celebrities may endorse a financial brand but cannot recommend specific financial products. The proposed framework seeks to extend the same principle to creators.
The Implementation Problem: Fake Followers, Cross-Platform Gaps and a Two-Speed Compliance System
If the intent behind the proposal is broadly understood, its implementation may prove more complicated.
“This issue is further complicated by cross-platform discrepancies,” observed Chedda. A creator may have sizeable communities spread across multiple platforms without crossing the threshold on any one of them.
Daswani points to another challenge: audience authenticity. A large follower base does not necessarily translate into trust, engagement or influence.
Ujjwal believes agencies may ultimately need to run two separate frameworks, one for regulatory compliance and another for actual marketing value.
Srivastava warns that the proposal could create “a two-speed campaign system,” with some creators facing additional approval requirements while others continue operating under existing norms.
Kumar noted the industry also needs to account for fake and inflated followers, a problem that has persisted across social platforms for years. Bhagat adds that jurisdictional overlaps could further complicate matters as creators increasingly navigate multiple sectors and regulators.
The creator economy, once known for its agility, may soon find itself grappling with a more layered and formal compliance environment.
Beyond Follower Count: The Metrics That Actually Define Influence
Almost every person spoke to agree on one thing: follower count should be only one of many inputs.
“A follower count tells you how many people once clicked a button. It says nothing about how many of them are still listening or why,” pointed Bhagat.
For Kumar, the more meaningful metric is trust. “Celebrity today is about trust, not size,” he reiterates.
Chopra believes engagement and measurable outcomes matter far more than raw audience numbers. A creator’s ability to influence behaviour is ultimately more important than the ability to generate impressions.
Daswani points to metrics such as audience retention, repeat brand partnerships and measurable business outcomes as stronger indicators of long-term influence.
Ujjwal highlights category authority and audience authenticity, while Srivastava argues that influence must also be understood in context, particularly when it comes to high-trust categories like finance.
Chedda believes cultural relevance remains one of the most underappreciated metrics. The ability to shape conversations and transcend a single platform, he says, is what truly distinguishes celebrities from popular creators.
Collectively, these perspectives suggest that celebrity today is a combination of scale, trust, expertise and sustained relevance rather than audience size alone.
Compliance Tool or Cultural Redefinition?
Most industry leaders don’t believe SEBI is trying to redefine celebrity.
At its core, the proposal is an investor-protection measure aimed at creating clearer accountability around financial promotions.
But regulations often end up shaping culture beyond their original intent.
“When a regulator draws a line and says, ‘above this, you are a celebrity,’ it does not stay confined to the financial sector,” says Bhagat.
“A SEBI celebrity classification at 5 lakh followers will likely have a similar normalising effect,” says Ujjwal.
“The moment you put five lakh into a legal document, you have given every creator in India a target to chase,” adds Kumar.
Daswani believes the proposal has naturally sparked a broader conversation about what defines influence today, even if its primary objective remains compliance.
Srivastava agrees that the threshold should be seen as an operational benchmark rather than a definitive statement on fame, while Chopra argues that the industry itself still hasn’t settled on a universal definition of celebrity.
That may be the proposal’s most significant consequence.
For decades, culture and institutions determined who became a celebrity. Today, the answer lies somewhere between audience trust, commercial impact, cultural relevance and regulatory responsibility.
Whether five lakh followers truly make someone a celebrity remains deeply debatable.
What the proposal has made clear, however, is that digital creators have accumulated enough influence to demand celebrity-level scrutiny. And in forcing the industry to answer who gets to be called a celebrity, SEBI may have exposed a larger identity crisis within the creator economy itself, one that nobody seems to have fully resolved yet.
