OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity are escalating an aggressive push into India, rolling out free and heavily discounted artificial intelligence services as competition for users, data, and long-term dominance intensifies.
What began as a race for scale is now also shaped by geopolitics, with executives and analysts pointing to the renewed tariff war between Washington and Beijing as a key factor accelerating the pivot toward India.
India has become the most strategically important consumer market for AI deployment. It is the world’s most populous country, the second-largest smartphone market with about 730 million devices, and one of the cheapest places to consume mobile data.
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According to Reuters, Indians use an average of 21 gigabytes per month, paying about 9.2 cents per gigabyte, among the lowest rates globally. That combination of scale, affordability, and constant connectivity has made India a natural testing ground for mass-market AI adoption.
In recent months, however, India’s appeal has grown beyond demographics. Executives and analysts say American technology companies are moving faster into the country following the latest escalation in trade tensions between the United States and China, triggered earlier this year by new tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration. The renewed standoff has deepened uncertainty for U.S. firms operating in or selling to China, particularly in sensitive areas such as artificial intelligence, data, and advanced computing.
Against that backdrop, India is increasingly viewed as a safer, more open alternative for growth. It offers a vast consumer base, fewer restrictions on foreign digital services, and a government that has signaled openness to becoming a global technology hub, even as it tightens oversight in select areas.
The shift is visible in how aggressively AI companies are subsidizing access.
In November, Google began offering its Gemini AI Pro subscription — normally priced at around $400 — free for 18 months to roughly 500 million subscribers of Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom operator. The move instantly put one of Google’s most advanced consumer AI models into the hands of a massive audience. Last week, Google expanded the push by including India among the countries eligible for its heavily discounted “AI Plus” package.
OpenAI has matched that strategy. The company made its ChatGPT Go plan free for a year in India, even though the same plan carries fees in more than 100 other countries and previously cost about $54 locally. The Go plan offers extended usage above the basic tier, and the free offer is available only in India.
Perplexity, the AI-powered search and research startup, has also joined the scramble. It made its Pro plan — priced globally at $200 a year — free for a year for users of Indian telecom operator Airtel, giving them unlimited access to its most advanced tools.
Early data shows a sharp surge in adoption. According to figures from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower compiled for Reuters, daily active users of ChatGPT in India jumped 607% year on year to 73 million as of last week, more than double the number in the United States. Gemini’s daily users in India rose 15% after the Reliance Jio offer to reach about 17 million, compared with roughly 3 million in the U.S.
India is now the largest market globally by daily users for both ChatGPT and Gemini, Sensor Tower said. Perplexity’s growth has been even more pronounced: India now accounts for more than a third of its global daily active users, up from just 7% last year.
Analysts say the immediate goal is scale, but the longer-term objective is data. India’s linguistic complexity — dozens of major languages, hundreds of dialects, and widespread code-switching — offers training material that remains underrepresented in existing AI datasets. Models trained largely on Western and Chinese data often struggle with such patterns.
Five AI analysts told Reuters that large-scale Indian usage provides a rare opportunity to refine AI systems on real-world multilingual behavior, informal speech, and region-specific context. That training is seen as vital for building models that can operate globally, especially as access to Chinese data becomes more constrained for U.S. firms amid the trade conflict.
“India helps fill structural gaps in AI training data,” said Sagar Vishnoi, co-founder of AI think tank Future Shift Labs. “The way users mix languages and interact with technology here gives models exposure they simply don’t get elsewhere.”
OpenAI’s India executive, Pragya Misra, has framed the free rollout as part of an “India-first commitment,” saying the aim is to make AI tools more accessible. Analysts note that the timing also aligns with a broader recalibration by U.S. tech firms as China becomes a more complex and politically sensitive market.
The strategy echoes earlier successes in India’s digital economy. Reliance Industries, led by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, transformed the telecom sector in 2016 by offering months of free data and voice services, rapidly building a user base that now exceeds 500 million. Similar tactics were later used in digital media, including free cricket streaming, to lock in audiences before monetization.
Usage patterns suggest Indian users are engaging deeply with AI tools. Sensor Tower data shows that 46% of ChatGPT’s monthly users in India opened the app daily in November, compared with 20% for Perplexity and 14% for Gemini.
At the same time, concerns about data use are growing, with some users reportedly opting out of sharing their data for AI training where possible, aware that free services often come with trade-offs.