OpenAI and Google Battle for Indian AI Users With Freebies and Data Strategy
OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity are intensifying their competition in India by offering free access to premium AI tools in a bid to capture the world’s largest base of multilingual users — and the valuable data that comes with them. Analysts say the move reflects a calculated effort to harvest diverse linguistic training data that can enhance global AI models.
India: A Key Battleground for AI Expansion
India, with its 730 million smartphone users and exceptionally low mobile data rates, has become a crucial growth market for global technology firms. On average, Indians consume 21 gigabytes of data monthly, paying just 9.2 cents per gigabyte — among the lowest rates worldwide.
In November, Google began offering its $400 Gemini AI Pro subscription free for 18 months to 500 million customers of Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom network. It has since expanded discounted “AI Plus” plans across dozens of countries. OpenAI followed suit by making its ChatGPT Go plan — previously priced at $54 in India — free for one year. Perplexity, meanwhile, offered its $200-a-year Pro package free for Airtel subscribers, granting unlimited access to its advanced research tools.
Surge in AI Usage Across India
The free plans have triggered a sharp rise in adoption. According to Sensor Tower data compiled for Reuters, daily active users of ChatGPT in India have soared 607% year-on-year to 73 million, more than double the U.S. user base. Gemini’s daily users grew 15% after the Reliance Jio partnership, reaching 17 million, while Perplexity saw India account for over a third of its global user activity, up from just 7% last year.
OpenAI’s India head, Pragya Misra, described the free ChatGPT Go rollout as part of the company’s “continued India-first commitment.” However, experts believe the strategy also serves a deeper purpose. “Free plans fill gaps in AI training data sets that currently lack insights into user behaviour patterns in this region,” said Sagar Vishnoi, co-founder of AI think tank Future Shift Labs.
Multilingual Data: A Hidden Prize
Analysts highlight India’s linguistic diversity as a powerful advantage for AI development. With hundreds of languages and dialects in daily use, interactions from Indian users help AI systems learn to handle complex, mixed-language conversations — a capability that remains limited in many Western-trained models.
Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance, which partnered with Gemini, has a history of using free services to attract customers, a tactic that helped it amass more than 500 million telecom users. The approach appears to be paying off again in the AI sector.
Balancing Benefits and Data Privacy
Free access has made AI tools a part of daily life for many Indians. PhD student Anees Hassan from Hyderabad said he uses ChatGPT and Gemini for up to three hours a day for research, writing, and presentations. “The free plan was not good enough before because I used to hit chat limits faster,” he said. Still, he remains cautious about privacy. “I am concerned about data harvesting, so I used the opt-out feature to stop sharing my data for AI training.”
Sensor Tower’s analysis shows that 46% of ChatGPT’s monthly users in India open the app daily, compared with 20% for Perplexity and 14% for Gemini — underscoring how user loyalty is already tilting toward OpenAI.
While none of the companies commented on the report, industry experts agree that India’s rapidly expanding digital ecosystem — and the linguistic variety of its users — make it the next major frontier for AI training and market dominance.
with inputs from Reuters