A vetting checklist for Indian creator partnerships

A media kit is a sales document. It reports the numbers that flatter and omits the ones that decide whether a partnership works. Everything below can be checked from public data plus what a creator will share on request, and none of it takes long once the process exists.

Audience quality

• Geography: what share of the audience is in the cities or states you actually sell in.
• Age and gender split against your buyer, not against the category.
• Language of the comments, which is often not the language of the content.
• Growth shape: steady growth is normal, vertical steps are worth asking about.

Engagement that means something

Compare a creator to their own median rather than to a category benchmark. A creator whose last twenty posts sit in a tight band is predictable, which is what a media plan needs. One post that outperformed by an order of magnitude usually means a trend caught it, not that the audience is unusually responsive.

• Saves and shares relative to reach, which predict purchase better than likes.
• Comment substance: specific questions rather than emoji chains.
• Whether the creator answers comments, which predicts how they will handle the campaign.
• Performance of their last three paid posts against their organic median.

Category credibility

Has this creator earned the right to talk about your category? A lifestyle creator can carry desire for a skincare product; only a qualified creator can carry an efficacy claim. In finance and health, credentials and registration status are not a nicety, they determine what may legally be said.

Brand safety and disclosure history

• Recent brand associations, including competitors and anything in a conflicting category.
• Whether past paid posts were disclosed, which is required under India's consumer-protection endorsement guidance.
• Public controversies, and how the creator handled them.
• Content adjacent to the partnership that a brand would not want to sit beside.

The practical questions

Finally, the unglamorous ones that decide whether a campaign ships: does the creator deliver on time, do they accept feedback, will they grant paid usage, and have they worked to a brief before. A creator with perfect metrics and no delivery record is a risk with good numbers attached.