OpenAI has appointed Prabhjeet Singh, who ran Uber's India and South Asia operations, as its first managing director for India. He joins in September, reporting to OpenAI's Asia Pacific head, and takes charge of everything from enterprise sales to government relationships. The hire is not just a staffing decision; it is a statement about how seriously OpenAI is treating a market it now calls its second-largest globally.
The user numbers back that up. India has 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users, and the app has been downloaded more times in India than in the United States since launch. OpenAI has opened offices in New Delhi, with Mumbai and Bengaluru expansions planned, partnered with conglomerates Reliance and Tata Group, and rolled out a low-cost plan called ChatGPT Go priced under $5 a month, later made free for a year for Indian users. By any measure of attention and resources, India is now a priority.
The real challenge sitting underneath all of this is money. Despite all those users, the revenue picture is thin. India accounts for roughly 1 in 5 generative AI app downloads worldwide, but only about 1% of in-app subscription purchases. The math is simple: hundreds of millions of people are using ChatGPT for free, and very few are paying for it.
This is not a problem unique to OpenAI. Google has pushed Gemini onto Indian phones through Android, which runs on roughly 95% of smartphones in the country. Google also struck a deal with Reliance Jio to offer Gemini AI Pro free for 18 months to Jio's subscribers. Anthropic hired a former Microsoft India executive to lead its Bengaluru office and is targeting Indian enterprises rather than fighting the consumer price war.
The free promotional periods that drove the user surge are winding down. OpenAI's free ChatGPT Go access in India has ended. Perplexity ended its bundled deal with telecom operator Airtel in January. The next few months are when the industry finds out whether Indian users will pay, or whether they will simply move to whatever is free next.
For Singh, the job is essentially to solve that conversion problem. His background at Uber is relevant: Uber spent years in India fighting price wars, navigating regulators, and building a local business on thin margins before eventually finding a sustainable model. The playbook of landing large numbers of users cheaply and then figuring out how to charge them later is one he has lived through.
The enterprise side of the business is where the real revenue opportunity in India sits right now. Indian banks, insurers, and large technology services companies are actively deploying AI in production, and that work generates meaningful contracts. OpenAI is hiring deployment engineers, solutions engineers, and a partner director in India, which points to a push to get its tools embedded in business workflows rather than relying on individual subscriptions.
For any business operator looking at this story, the signal is clear: the world's largest AI companies are committing serious organisational infrastructure, not just marketing, to the Indian market. That means AI tools will become cheaper, more locally adapted, and more deeply integrated into Indian enterprise software over the next two to three years. Companies with any exposure to India, whether through suppliers, customers, or operations, should expect AI adoption there to accelerate faster than in most other markets.