The Paid E20 Campaign: How Influencers Were Offered ₹15 Lakh to Promote Ethanol Fuel

In July 2026, automotive content creator Ishaan Bhardwaj — known as The Race Monkey — publicly shared screenshots of a pitch he received from influencer agency Hextech Media, offering up to ₹15 lakh to post pro-E20 content highlighting farmer welfare and environmental benefits. He turned it down and posted the evidence. What followed was an investigation by Alt News and BOOM that confirmed the existence of a government-backed paid promotion campaign — and exposed that multiple prominent influencers had participated without disclosing the sponsorship.

The pitch: ₹15 lakh for pro-E20 content

The screenshots shared by Ishaan Bhardwaj showed an approach from Hextech Media, an influencer marketing agency. The pitch offered payment of up to ₹15 lakh for creating and posting content that presented E20 in a positive light. The suggested talking points included:

• Benefits to farmers from the ethanol procurement programme
• Environmental advantages of ethanol blending (reduced tailpipe emissions)
• India’s reduced dependence on crude oil imports
• The government’s vision for energy self-sufficiency

The pitch did not ask creators to disclose the content as a paid partnership. It framed the content as organic opinion.

Bhardwaj, who runs The Race Monkey — a YouTube channel focused on automotive content and car culture — turned down the offer. More importantly, he posted the screenshots publicly, exposing the campaign. His decision to go public made the paid campaign a news story.

Who participated

Investigations by Alt News and BOOM identified multiple influencers who posted pro-E20 content that appeared to be part of the campaign. The most prominent participants reported were:

• Abhishek Malhan (Fukra Insaan) — One of India’s most popular YouTube creators, with tens of millions of subscribers. His E20-related video reportedly garnered 1.15 crore (11.5 million) views. Malhan later said the reel had been made approximately 1.5 years prior and had been taken down.
• RJ Naved — A well-known radio jockey and content creator, popular for his prank and social-experiment videos.
• Thagesh — A popular Hindi-language content creator.

Other influencers were identified in the Alt News and BOOM reports. The common thread was that none of the participants marked their E20 content with paid-partnership disclosures, #sponsored tags, or any indication that the content was commissioned.

The disclosure problem

Indian advertising standards require that paid promotional content be disclosed to the audience. The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) issued updated influencer guidelines in 2021, requiring:

• All paid content must carry a disclosure label visible in the first three seconds.
• Acceptable labels include “Paid partnership,” “Sponsored,” “Ad,” or the platform’s built-in paid-partnership tool.
• The disclosure must be in the same language as the content and must not be buried in hashtags at the end of a post.

None of the identified pro-E20 posts met these requirements. The content was presented as the creator’s genuine opinion, not as a paid promotion. For audiences of millions, there was no way to know that the enthusiasm for E20 had been purchased.

The government’s role

The campaign was described as “government-backed” in media reports. The mechanism works through intermediaries: a government ministry or PSU (public sector undertaking) contracts an advertising or PR agency, which in turn contracts influencer agencies like Hextech Media, which approach individual creators. This multi-layered structure provides plausible deniability at each level.

Government-funded influencer campaigns are not inherently improper. Ministries regularly use social media outreach for public-health campaigns (COVID vaccination, Polio), tax compliance, and scheme awareness. The issues arise when:

• The paid nature is not disclosed, making propaganda indistinguishable from opinion.
• The content presents disputed policy claims as settled facts (e.g., “E20 does not affect mileage”) without acknowledging the government’s own ARAI data showing energy-content loss.
• The same government that pays for positive content simultaneously files FIRs against citizensposting negative experiences.

The asymmetry: paid praise, prosecuted criticism

The most striking aspect of the paid campaign is its timing. In the same period:

This asymmetry is the core issue. A government confident in its policy should not need to pay for support while punishing dissent. Paid promotion and criminal prosecution are not complementary communication strategies — together, they indicate that the policy cannot survive an open, unmanaged public debate.

Abhishek Malhan’s defence

When confronted about his E20 content, Abhishek Malhan (Fukra Insaan) said the reel was made approximately 1.5 years before the controversy and had already been taken down. This timeline, if accurate, would place the content’s creation in early 2025, before the E20 mandate took full effect on April 1, 2025 (for the initial phase) or April 1, 2026 (for the nationwide rollout).

However, 1.15 crore views suggest the content was actively circulating well into 2026. Even if the creation was earlier, the impact on public opinion occurred during the mandate’s implementation, when the paid-vs-organic distinction mattered most.

What the investigation found

Both Alt News and BOOM conducted independent investigations and confirmed:

• Hextech Media and similar agencies approached multiple influencers with paid pro-E20 briefs.
• Payment amounts varied but went up to ₹15 lakh per creator for a single piece of content.
• The talking points were pre-scripted and focused on farmer welfare and environmental benefits.
• Participating influencers did not disclose the paid nature of the content.
• The campaign appeared to be funded through government channels, though the specific ministry or PSU was not definitively identified in public reporting.

Exchange4Media, an industry trade publication, also covered the story, noting the growing practice of government-funded influencer campaigns across multiple policy areas.

Why undisclosed paid campaigns undermine E20 credibility

The irony of the paid campaign is that it undermined the very credibility it sought to build. Once the campaign was exposed:

• Every positive E20 post by any influencer became suspect. Audiences who learned about the paid campaign began asking whether every pro-E20 creator was paid, even those who were genuinely positive about the fuel.
• The government’s legitimate arguments for E20 (reduced oil imports, farmer income support) were tainted by association with covert marketing.
• Vehicle owners who were already sceptical of E20 saw the paid campaign as confirmation that the government knew the policy was unpopular and chose manipulation over transparency.

Transparent advocacy would have been both legal and more effective. A government ministry posting its own content, or sponsoring clearly labelled partnerships with creators, would have been straightforward public communication. The decision to disguise the campaign as organic opinion suggests a calculation that the arguments for E20 were not strong enough to stand on their own.

The factual position

Sources

• Alt News — Influencers paid to promote government’s E20 initiative
• BOOM — PR companies coaxing influencers to promote ethanol policy