Bidirectional agency representation: why the same platform serves talent agencies and ad agencies
Indian agency reality is messier than the Western talent-agency-vs-ad-agency split. The same operating company often reps a creator on Tuesday and a brand on Thursday. Single-direction data models force agencies to misclassify their relationships — here is what bidirectional rep means in the data model, and the operational consequence.
By Sumit Kumar
There is a clean theoretical split in agency-land that does not survive contact with the Indian market.
The Western frame: talent agencies represent creators and earn from creator-side commission. Ad agencies represent brands and earn from brand-side fees. Two different business models, two different counterparties, two different software stacks.
The Indian reality, observed across roughly thirty agency conversations in 2025–26: the same operating company often reps a creator on Tuesday and a brand on Thursday. The talent agency that started by managing five creators is now executing brand campaigns for a D2C label using its own creator roster plus open-call creators. The ad agency that started by running media for a CPG client now also has eight retainer creators it puts on those campaigns. The hybrid shop has been hybrid since founding.
Most software written for this space picks one direction and forces the agency to misclassify. This post is about what happens architecturally when you don’t force the choice.
The three Indian agency archetypes
Three patterns, all real, all with multiple ₹10 Cr+ ARR examples we can point to:
1. Talent-rep agencies. Founded as creator management. Roster of 20–200 creators. Primary income: 15–25% commission on brand deals brought to or negotiated for the creator. Examples skew toward boutique shops founded post-2020, often by ex-creators or ex-brand managers.
2. Brand-side / ad agencies. Founded as media or creative agencies. Clients are brands. Primary income: retainer + media-buying fee + creative production fee. Creator marketing landed as a budget line item from the brand side. Examples skew toward older shops with established media-buying capability.
3. Hybrid shops. Started as one and grew into both. Or were both from day one because the founder saw the synergy. Primary income: a mix — sometimes a single client is paying via both rails. Examples are the fastest-growing of the three groups in Indian creator marketing.
Each archetype has a different counterparty mix, different revenue recognition, different KYB requirements, different TDS attribution rules, and different audit-trail expectations.
Why single-direction platforms force misclassification
Most creator-economy software ships with a single-direction data model:
- Stripe Connect–shaped: platform → sub-merchant → end customer. Models the marketplace direction; can’t express “agency represents brand”.
- Horizontal influencer-marketing SaaS: brand → creator (with agency optionally collapsed into a flat “account manager” role). Models the campaign-execution direction; can’t express agency-on-behalf-of-creator commission flows.
- Project-management-shaped: workspace → projects → users. Models nothing financial; can’t express any of the relationships natively.
The compromise an agency runs into looks like this: a talent agency managing a creator’s deal with a brand has to choose, at signup, whether they’re the agency for the brand or the agency for the creator. The data model only supports one foreign key. So they pick one. Now their TDS attribution is wrong (commission flows in the wrong direction), their GST treatment is wrong (place-of-supply keys off the wrong entity), and their Form 16A workflow is wrong (the deductor identity is the wrong party).
It looks like a software annoyance. It’s an accounting failure.
What bidirectional means in the data model
Bidirectional agency representation is not a feature. It’s a data-model property: the agency–brand and agency–creator relationships are both first-class, independently typed, per-engagement scoped, and permission-controlled.
Concretely, this means:
A per-relationship type field. The relationship between an agency
and its counterparty is typed: talent_rep, brand_of_record,
hybrid. The same agency can hold a talent_rep relationship with
Creator A and a brand_of_record relationship with Brand B
simultaneously, on the same platform, with different commission
flows and different TDS attribution.
A per-relationship permission catalog. What the agency can do on
behalf of the counterparty is a row in a client_relationship_permissions
table — not a global role. Tier-1 permissions (campaign creation,
creator invitation, draft contract authoring) are available
immediately. Tier-2 permissions (move money, sign on behalf, accept
TDS attribution) gate on the counterparty’s KYB / KYC verification
status. This is defense-in-depth: even if the relationship is
“active”, financial actions are blocked until the
underlying party is verified.
Per-engagement attribution. Each campaign engagement records which
relationship it executed under. So when the audit asks “under
what authority did the agency move ₹2 lakh from the brand to the
creator on 14 August”, the answer is a per-engagement
relationship_id pointer, not a guess.
Independent KYB chains. The agency has its own KYB. The brand has its own KYB. The creator has its own KYC. None of these collapse into each other. Three independent verification chains, three independent audit trails, three independent failure modes. That’s the only shape that survives Indian regulatory scrutiny.
The operational consequence
The reason this matters operationally — and why it’s a hard line for SutraOS — is that the Indian compliance-reporting layer treats these relationships differently and the agency cannot fudge it.
- A
talent_repagency’s commission income comes from the creator, not the brand. The §194H attribution is on the agency-creator leg. - A
brand_of_recordagency’s retainer + creative fee income comes from the brand. The §194J attribution is on the brand-agency leg. - A
hybridengagement may have both happening on the same campaign, on different rows, with different deductors filing 26Q against different PANs.
If the platform model collapses these into one relationship type, the agency’s 26Q filing is wrong. The Form 16A issuance is wrong. The GST self-invoice routing is wrong. None of this is hypothetical; we have read at least four ITAT orders where the underlying dispute was the attribution direction.
One platform for both rosters
The practical consequence of getting this right at the data-model level is that a hybrid agency doesn’t need two software stacks — one for the talent roster and one for the brand client list. The same platform handles both, because the relationships are independently typed.
For SutraOS specifically, this is what unlocks the agency-led GTM motion: a hybrid shop signs up once, brings its full creator roster (KYC-verified through the platform) and its full brand client list (KYB-verified through the platform), and starts running campaigns across both rails in the same week. The supply-side density that an agency-led GTM model needs to work shows up immediately, instead of after a year of stack-stitching.
The design-partner spots for both archetypes are open. We’re accepting 3–5 founding agencies — both talent-rep and brand-of-record shapes welcome — through July. The onboarding flow is the same for both because the data model doesn’t force you to pick a side.
If you’re an agency operator who has ever stared at a software signup form and thought “but we’re both”, you’re the audience for the SutraOS design-partner program. Twenty minutes, no deck.
Curious how SutraOS would handle this for you?
We’re accepting 3–5 design partners through July — Indian brands and talent agencies running 20+ creators. Twenty-minute discovery call, live walkthrough against real RazorpayX, no deck.
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