AI Giants Battle for India’s Users With Free Plans to Tap Multilingual Data

OpenAI, Google and Perplexity have launched an aggressive push to expand their artificial intelligence user base in India, offering premium AI services for free in a market known for price sensitivity and massive digital scale. India, the world’s most populous nation and second-largest smartphone market with around 730 million devices, offers some of the lowest mobile data rates globally, making it an attractive testing ground for rapid AI adoption.

Google has begun offering its $400 Gemini AI Pro subscription free for 18 months to 500 million Reliance Jio users, while OpenAI has made its ChatGPT Go plan free for a year exclusively in India. Perplexity has followed suit by offering its $200-per-year Pro plan free to Airtel users. Early data shows a sharp surge in usage, with ChatGPT’s daily active users in India jumping 607% year-on-year to 73 million, surpassing usage in the United States.

Analysts say the freebies strategy is aimed not only at user growth but also at harvesting valuable multilingual training data. India’s mix of languages and dialects provides a crucial stress test for AI models, helping fill gaps in existing training datasets. While users welcome improved access, concerns over data privacy persist, with some opting out of data sharing even as AI tools become increasingly embedded in daily academic and professional work.

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