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From fun to fines: India's meme marketing boom meets copyright heat
Mint Chennai
|May 20, 2025
Remember when you casually shared the perfectly synced choreography of dance influencer Parveen Kumar Sharma on the viral hip-hop track Vartman? While it feels like harmless fun, sharing such content can unknowingly step on copyright infringement.
India's meme marketing boom, where pages earn lakhs per month promoting brands through witty, viral content, is built on a fragile foundation of widespread copyright violations, misinformation and regulatory grey areas.
What started as a fun, low-cost way for brands to tap millions of young social media users has surged into a ₹3,000 crore industry by 2025, says equity firm Equentis. "When I started this page for fun in 12th standard in 2014, I never anticipated that it would become a lucrative business due to paid promotions," said Archit Madaan, founder of The Indian Sarcasm, a meme page turned marketing agency.
This story is from the May 20, 2025 edition of Mint Chennai.
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