AI Giants Offer Free Plans to Tap India's Growing User Base
- OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity roll out free AI plans for Indian users
- Companies aim to gather multilingual data from the country’s vast user base
- Free plans drive sharp growth in daily active users across platforms
OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity have launched aggressive free AI offerings in India, aiming to attract millions of users and gain access to the country’s rich linguistic and data diversity. Analysts say this strategy allows AI companies to collect valuable multilingual data from one of the world’s largest and most digitally active populations.
India is the second-largest smartphone market, with around 730 million devices and some of the lowest mobile data rates globally. To entice users, Google offered its $400 Gemini AI Pro subscription free for 18 months to 500 million Reliance Jio customers starting in November, and later introduced its discounted 'AI Plus' package to Indian users. OpenAI made its ChatGPT Go plan free in India for a year, a subscription that previously cost $54 locally. Similarly, Perplexity opened its $200-a-year Pro tool free for Airtel users, granting unlimited access to advanced AI research features.
The free plans have already driven a surge in usage. Daily active users of ChatGPT in India jumped 607 percent year-on-year to 73 million, more than double the U.S. figures. Gemini AI daily users in India rose 15 percent since the Reliance Jio offer, reaching 17 million, while Perplexity now sees over a third of its global daily users coming from India, up from just 7 percentlast year.
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Industry experts suggest that India’s price-sensitive market and high data consumption make it an ideal testing ground for AI adoption. While companies have not commented publicly, the rapid growth highlights India’s significance in the global AI landscape and its potential as a hub for multilingual AI data collection.
