NEW YORK, January 1, 2026, 14:42 ET
- A year-end profile said Indian creator Tanmay Bhat became a breakout force in advertising through his agency Moonshot.
- A separate “richest YouTubers” ranking again put MrBeast at No. 1 based on unverified net-worth estimates.
- The two snapshots underscore how top creators are moving beyond videos into full-scale businesses and brand work.
Tanmay Bhat, a comedian-turned-creator and co-founder of India’s AIB comedy collective, emerged in 2025 as one of the most sought-after creative partners for brands, a year-end profile by Storyboard18 said.
The attention matters now because marketers are under pressure to deliver campaigns that travel quickly across social platforms, and creators increasingly sit at the centre of that push.
It also reflects the maturation of the “creator economy” — the business built around online creators earning from advertising, sponsorships and product sales — as the biggest names turn influence into repeatable commercial systems.
Storyboard18 said Bhat’s career has evolved from comedy writing and stand-up into investing, streaming and advertising work, with his return built on consistent output and format changes rather than a traditional apology-driven comeback narrative.
On Instagram, the outlet put Bhat’s following at about 2.1 million, with average views of roughly 850,000 per Reel — Instagram’s short-form video format — and engagement above 8% at that scale.
On YouTube, Storyboard18 said he has about 5.3 million subscribers and nearly 1,600 uploads, with long-form videos averaging about 2.6 million views and resonating beyond India’s biggest metros, including in “Tier-2” and “Tier-3” cities — smaller urban centres where digital adoption has been rising.
Moonshot’s rise accelerated with a series of campaigns for CRED, Storyboard18 said, starting with a widely discussed reworking of former India cricket captain Rahul Dravid.
The outlet said Moonshot’s brand work later expanded into Disney+ Hotstar’s Indian Premier League (IPL) campaigns featuring Shah Rukh Khan and M.S. Dhoni, along with ads for Lenskart, Subway and BoldCare that leaned on internet-first humour and celebrity recontextualisation.
Storyboard18 said one CRED film in 2025 leaned into artificial intelligence, opening with an AI-generated version of national team coach Gautam Gambhir in a surreal pitch before cutting to the real Gambhir smashing his laptop with a bat.
A separate year-end snapshot of the creator economy focused on personal wealth, though the figures cannot be independently verified.
The Times of India published a “top 10 richest YouTubers in 2025” ranking that cited viral net-worth estimates compiled by the RichestTuber website, listing MrBeast first with an estimated $1 billion. Indiatimes
The list also placed creators including Jeffree Star and Logan Paul near the top, and said many leading channels now build revenue streams outside YouTube through product brands, licensing deals, merchandise and entertainment ventures.
Taken together, the year-end profile and the wealth ranking point to the same shift: creators are no longer only talent for brands to hire, but increasingly operators who build businesses — and, in cases like Bhat’s, creative shops that compete for advertising budgets once dominated by traditional agencies.
