Design licences and per-unit royalty statements for illustrators and brands
TL;DR Motifcount lets independent Indian illustrators license their artwork to apparel, stationery and home-décor brands on royalty terms both sides can check. It issues the written licence, gives every licensed product a tag tied to the design and turns the brand's sales data into a monthly statement. Brands pay a platform fee, and artists finally get to see what sold.
Indian illustrators who license work to brands usually take a flat fee, because a royalty they can't verify isn't worth much. The brand knows how many mugs sold and the artist doesn't. When a royalty is agreed, statements turn up late or never, and checking them means asking for invoices the artist has no right to see.
The law already expects written terms. An assignment of copyright has to specify the rights, duration, territory and royalty, and an unstated period lapses to five years[1]. Few small deals meet that bar.
One Mumbai retailer built around Indian graphic artists, drew more than 10,000 artist applications for about 150 places before it stopped taking orders in March 2023[2]. So there's no shortage of artists, just of reliable deal plumbing.
Motifcount gives an artist and a brand a standard licence covering the design, product types, territory, term, the royalty per unit or as a percentage and an advance if any. Both sign it online. Each licensed product run then gets a printed tag or label code linked to the licence. The brand connects its storefront or uploads monthly sales, Motifcount matches units to licences and both sides see the same statement. The royalty goes through the brand's normal bank transfer, with the statement as the record.
Spot checks keep everyone honest. A shopper or the artist can scan a tag and see whether that product is licensed, and stock without tags points to a leak.
The seed pitched smart contracts for licensing and royalties. We dropped that, because the missing input is sales data a blockchain can't see, and paying in tokens would bring 30% tax and 1% TDS on each transfer[3]. A shared ledger of sales with spot checks does the job.
Brands pay, because they want a steady flow of fresh designs with clean rights. Our test model is 3–5% of royalties paid through the platform, plus ₹2,000–5,000 a month for brands licensing more than ten designs.
Artists join free. Small D2C brands that already run artist collaborations are the first buyers.
Global print-on-demand has shown that artists will upload work for a cut, and one large global site reported 650,000 artists and 5 million customers in FY2023[4]. Indian D2C brands now sell mostly online, so the sales data for statements already sits in their storefront tools. And the closure of a dedicated artist retailer[2] left many illustrators hunting for brand deals.
We found no public figure for design-licensing royalties paid to Indian artists. The firmest signal is supply - more than 10,000 artists applied to one Mumbai retailer[2].
That global site's 650,000 artists[4] are an adjacent sign of how many will license on platform terms. Your pilot has to measure how many brands will pick royalty deals over flat fees.
Global print-on-demand sites let artists set a margin, but there the site is the seller and not a brand licensee[4]. A Mumbai artist-first retailer ran that model and closed in 2023[2]. Licensing agencies handle big character properties for film and sport.
Nobody we found offers small Indian brands and independent illustrators a standard licence with checked statements.
| Difficulty | Moderate (34/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹30–55 L |
| Time to launch | 4–6 months |
The software is light. The hard part is the classic chicken-and-egg start, because brands want a catalogue of designs and artists want brands that pay. Getting brands to share real sales data and keeping tags on products through their factories takes steady, patient account work.
No special licence here. The rules that matter are about how the licences you issue are written.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI decide whether a design is a copy or what an artist is owed in a dispute. Those need a person and sometimes a lawyer.
Want to work out the AI layer for Motifcount? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
I like this for a founder from the design or D2C world who can sign the first 20 brands personally. If you're expecting fast scale then look elsewhere.
Start with one product category, say T-shirts or notebooks, and prove one thing - that ten brands will report sales every month for six months.
Plan for roughly ₹30–55 L over 4–6 months. The software is light, so most of it goes on signing artists and brands.
No sector licence. Your licences must be written as the Copyright Act requires, and you need the usual company, GST and data rules.
Yes, illustrators everywhere struggle to verify royalties from brands. Check your local copyright law on written licences before you draft templates.
The free Motifcount validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the copyright and tax checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for artists and brands, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Motifcount or something close to it? The make-or-break work is getting brands to share honest monthly sales, and I'm happy to work through that with you. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.