Quick answer
Male creators remain a small slice of India's makeup talent pool. Among Instagram creators with 10,000+ followers, men make up about 5.5% of makeup creators (299 of 5,475). The makeup brand-collab market itself logged 5,723 posts across 3,013 creators in the last three months, so the opportunity for brands willing to look is real but under-tapped.
What share of beauty collabs feature male creators is a question more brands are asking as grooming content and male-fronted beauty accounts gain traction. The short answer: still a minority, but a growing and under-tapped one. Men remain a small share of creators actively posting makeup content, and an even smaller share of the highest-viewed brand collaborations. That gap is exactly why it's worth understanding where male creators do perform well, how they're positioned when they do land brand deals, and how a brand can build a male-creator strategy instead of treating it as an afterthought. This piece breaks down the current numbers from India's creator and brand-collaboration data, and what they mean for planning a campaign that includes men without forcing the fit.
How big is India's beauty collab market right now
Methodology
Collab figures below cover Makeup-category brand collaboration posts from 2026-08-14 to 2026-11-12 (the last three months). Engagement rate = (likes + comments) / views per post; tier and gender figures use the creator's profile data, not the post itself, since individual collab posts aren't tagged by creator gender in the content database.
Source: MyWall Genie · 5,723 collabs · 2026-08-14 to 2026-11-12
In that window, 3,013 distinct creators ran paid or gifted makeup collaborations with 218 brands, at a median engagement rate of 1.53%. Nano and micro creators (under 100K followers) accounted for close to two-thirds of all collabs, which matters for a male-creator strategy: most of the volume in this category sits in follower tiers where gender gaps in the creator pool are narrower than at the top.
Where male creators perform best by tier
Median engagement rate by follower tier (Makeup collabs, last 3 months)
| Tier | Collabs | Median ER (%) | Avg views | Repeat rate (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| nano | 1,558 | 1.91% | 25,389 | 20.7% |
| micro | 2,155 | 1.45% | 36,756 | 15.4% |
| macro | 1,568 | 1.3% | 100,277 | 23.7% |
| mega | 442 | 1.62% | 505,882 | 32.2% |
Source: MyWall Genie · 5,723 collabs · 2026-08-14 to 2026-11-12
Across the whole Makeup collab dataset, nano creators post the highest median engagement rate (1.91%), while mega creators have the highest repeat rate (32.2%); brands keep rehiring the same big names once a partnership works. For a brand testing male creators for the first time, this suggests starting in the nano-to-micro range, where engagement is strongest and the cost of a mismatch is lowest, rather than anchoring a male-creator strategy on a single mega-tier face.
Real campaigns worth watching
A few male creators in the data have already run live beauty and grooming collaborations, and their posts show what the format looks like in practice:
Male creators running beauty and grooming collabs
- @kamlesh.rockman, a makeup-artist creator with 1,692,773 followers, ran a Dermatouch Skincare sunscreen collaboration that pulled 27,467,294 views and 114,094 likes, evidence that a skills-led, dermat-adjacent angle can outperform typical beauty benchmarks even from a male creator.
- @mukulrichards_makeupartist, with 275,354 followers, partnered with Lakmé India on a step-by-step wedding-season makeup look that drew 41,841,309 views, showing a male makeup artist can land a mainstream cosmetics brand deal, not just niche grooming ones.
- @i_am_rahulchauhan18, a men's fashion and travel creator with 1,284,394 followers, ran a Beardo grooming campaign built around a beard-regrowth storyline, illustrating how grooming narratives can sit naturally inside a lifestyle feed rather than a dedicated beauty one.
Finding and vetting this smaller, more scattered pool of male creators at scale is exactly the kind of work an AI-powered influencer marketing platform is built for, matching briefs to creators by subniche, tier and past brand fit instead of manual scrolling. Grynow's AI-powered influencer marketing platform in India does this kind of matching directly.
Monthly trend: did male-friendly moments move the needle
Makeup collabs by month
Collab volume peaked in October 2026, coinciding with festive and wedding-season beauty budgets, before tapering into November. Engagement rates stayed fairly flat month to month (1.46%–1.63%), which suggests the bigger lever for brands is who they cast, not when they post — a steady reminder that adding male creators to a festive campaign doesn't require waiting for a seasonal dip in competition.
Strategies for brands building a male-creator beauty mix
Start with a skill-based or problem-solving angle
The strongest examples above all have a defined angle: technical artistry, dermat-adjacent credibility, or grooming-within-lifestyle. A generic "try our new blush" brief tends to underperform for a male creator whose audience didn't follow them for beauty tips; a specific, skills-based or problem-solving angle performs better, as the Dermatouch and Beardo examples both show.
Size the tier to the goal
If the goal is engagement and community trust, brief nano and micro male creators, where median engagement runs highest across the category. If the goal is reach for a launch, mega-tier creators deliver scale but expect a lower median engagement rate and should be paired with always-on mid-tier voices.
Give male creators a specific lane, not a generic brief
A generic beauty brief rarely lands well with a male creator whose following wasn't built around beauty content. Brands that succeed tend to hand male creators ownership of a format — a technique, a routine, a storyline — rather than asking them to mimic a typical female-creator GRWM post.
Track repeat rate before scaling the roster
Mega-tier creators in this data show a 32.2% repeat rate; brands that find a working male-creator fit tend to rehire rather than test broadly. Plan budget for a second and third collab with creators who perform, instead of spreading one-off briefs across a long list.
If building this list in-house feels slow, working with the best influencer marketing agency in India can shortcut the sourcing and vetting work, since agencies maintain updated creator rosters segmented by gender, subniche and past brand fit.
Key takeaways
- Male creators are roughly 5.5% of makeup creators (10,000+ followers) — a real but still minority share.
- Nano and micro tiers post the highest median engagement (1.91% and 1.45%) in the Makeup collab data; mega tiers post the highest repeat rate (32.2%).
- Real campaigns like Dermatouch's sunscreen push with @kamlesh.rockman, Lakmé's wedding-season look with @mukulrichards_makeupartist, and Beardo's grooming storyline with @i_am_rahulchauhan18 show male creators can already pull tens of millions of views in mainstream beauty and grooming collabs.
- An AI-powered influencer marketing platform can speed up finding and vetting this smaller, more scattered pool of male creators compared to manual outreach.
- Collab volume peaks around festive season (October), but engagement rate holds steady across months, so casting decisions matter more than timing.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of beauty influencers in India are male?
Based on creators with 10,000+ followers in the database, about 5.5% of makeup creators are male, with the remaining majority female or unspecified in profile data.
Why are there fewer male creators in makeup than in other beauty categories?
Makeup content has historically been built around tutorials and GRWM formats led by female creators, so fewer men establish a makeup-first identity. The male creators who do break through tend to anchor on a specific skill, like bridal artistry or SFX, rather than a general beauty feed.
Do male beauty creators get lower engagement than female creators?
The data doesn't break engagement rate out by gender directly, but individual male creators in the sample, such as @kamlesh.rockman at 5.38% average engagement, post well above the category's 1.53% median, so gender alone isn't a reliable predictor of performance.
Which follower tier works best for a first male-creator beauty collab?
Nano and micro tiers show the highest median engagement rates (1.91% and 1.45% respectively) in the Makeup collab data, making them a lower-risk starting point than a single mega-tier bet.
Is the number of male beauty creators growing in India?
This snapshot covers a single three-month window, so it can't confirm a trend; tracking the same subniche counts quarter over quarter is the practical way for a brand to see whether the male creator pool is expanding.