New Delhi: India is moving to formally measure its rapidly expanding creative economy, with the government preparing new statistical tools and classifications to capture the growing contribution of intellectual property (IP), digital content and cultural industries to economic growth, said Saurabh Garg, secretary in the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI).
Speaking at the CII Annual Business Summit 2026 in New Delhi on Monday, Garg said the creative economy is no longer a peripheral activity but among the fastest-growing segments of the country’s services-led growth story.
“Culture and commerce are no longer separate. They are very much intertwined,” the secretary said, highlighting the increasing importance of ideas, IP, designs and cultural assets in driving India’s future .
currently comprises more than half of the economy, while digital and creative industries are expanding rapidly, he said. Reflecting this shift, the government is set to introduce an Index of Services Production, similar to the Index of Industrial Production used for manufacturing.
“We need to measure what we treasure,” Garg said, adding that the government had also constituted an expert group last year to develop methods to measure the “knowledge part of the economy”, including creative industries.
To improve data capturing, the government revised the National Industrial Classification system in 2025 to include separate categories for emerging creative activities such as influencer-led businesses, video game publishing and blogging.
The push comes as policymakers globally increasingly focus on intangible assets and innovation-led growth. Garg cited the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics, awarded for work on innovation-driven economic growth, as evidence of the changing nature of global economies.
India has improved its standing on innovation metrics, as the country climbed from 81st rank in the Global Innovation Index in 2015 to 38th in 2025, Garg said.
The government is now trying to better quantify IP products within national accounts. Garg said four categories are currently tracked as part of IP-based capital formation: research and development, exploration activities, software, and literary, artistic and entertainment originals. Together, these account for over 10% of India’s gross capital formation, though the contribution of literary and creative products remains relatively small compared with software and R&D.
Garg cited figures from the World Intellectual Property Organization showing India’s intangible economy growing at 6.6%, the fastest among major economies.
India currently has around 40,000 patents, 170,000 copyrights, 2.2 million trademarks, about 140,000 registered designs and nearly 700 geographical indication (GI) tags, he said. He, however, added that these numbers remain low relative to the size of the economy. “Given the scale of our economy and the scale of the country, the numbers are much lower than what they should be,” Garg said, attributing this partly to the limited formalization of creative activities.
Copyrights are dominated by the literary and artistic sectors, accounting for about 85% of registrations in that category. In registered designs, clothing accounts for around 12%, furnishings 5%, and watches another 5%. Nearly 90% of GI registrations are linked to agriculture and handicrafts.
The secretary also underlined the importance of the informal , particularly in rural India. Creative arts and entertainment account for roughly 5% of workers in the informal sector, he said.
Annual gross value-addition for workers in creative arts and entertainment averages around ₹1 lakh per year, while sculptors, painters and jewellery makers typically earn between ₹1 lakh and ₹2 lakh.
Technology is also helping expand the reach of creative industries, Garg said, describing the sector as among the most inclusive parts of the economy because it cuts across urban-rural and formal-informal divides.
Garg also pointed to recent policy initiatives, including the announcement of the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies and the recognition of the “orange economy” in the Union budget. The creative economy, he said, could become an important pillar in India’s long-term growth ambitions under the Viksit Bharat 2047 vision.