India’s PR industry earned just $340 million in FY2026, but a new white paper pegs its economic influence at $545 billion a year.

The report, titled The Economic Impact of Public Relations in India, comes from Ipsos and was commissioned by the Public Relations Consultants Association of India (PRCAI).

It was unveiled at PRana 2026, the association’s annual reputation summit, held in Gurugram on September 2. The industry’s actual revenue for the year stood at Rs 3,230 crore.

To be clear, the $545 billion figure isn’t revenue the PR industry earns. It measures the value PR work protects and creates elsewhere, through three main channels. Reputation management is the biggest piece, accounting for about $265 billion.

The study leaned on existing investor relations research showing that roughly 28% of investment decisions are shaped by a company’s reputation, then applied that share against India’s listed market value of around $4.5 to $4.75 trillion.

Brand awareness comes next at $220 billion, calculated across nine sectors including IT services, FMCG, banking, pharmaceuticals and e-commerce. The smallest of the three, crisis management, is estimated at $60 billion.

Researchers studied over 90 major crisis events from the past decade, spanning product safety failures, cyberattacks and governance lapses, and found these typically cause average losses of 0.35% in revenue and 1.5% in market value.

Startups and e-commerce firms carried the highest exposure, at $12.8 billion a year.

PRCAI president Kunal Kishore Sinha said the number reflects consequence rather than income, calling it a way to show how reputation shapes business outcomes.

The paper drew on a survey of 500 Indian consumers along with sector revenue data and market analysis to arrive at its estimates.

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