India has become the main battleground among artificial intelligence giants. OpenAI and Google have started offering free plans and exclusive discounts in the country as a way to accelerate the adoption of their chatbots while simultaneously expanding access to valuable data for model training. Other companies in the sector, such as Perplexity, have also joined the strategy. The information comes from Reuters.

The move comes in an extremely favorable scenario. India is the world’s second-largest smartphone market, with around 730 million active devices. The average monthly mobile internet usage is about 21 GB per person, with an average cost of only $0.09 per gigabyte, one of the lowest in the world. This combination creates an ideal environment for the rapid popularization of AI-based digital tools.

Aggressive offers accelerate chatbot adoption

To attract price-sensitive users, Google took the first step in November by announcing free access to Gemini AI Pro—a service valued at $400—for 18 months to up to 500 million customers of Reliance Jio, India’s largest carrier. Soon after, the company included the country in a promotional package for the AI Plus plan, with prices well below those charged in other markets.

OpenAI responded shortly afterward by offering the ChatGPT Go plan free for one year exclusively to Indian users. Previously, the service cost around $54 in the country and was normally charged in more than 100 regions.

The results appeared quickly. The number of daily active ChatGPT users in India grew more than 600% compared to the previous year, reaching 73 million, easily surpassing the United States. Gemini also skyrocketed, reaching 17 million daily users in the country, compared to about 3 million in the U.S. market. Today, India is the largest global market for both platforms in terms of daily usage.

Linguistic diversity becomes a strategic AI asset

Experts point out that the companies’ goal goes beyond simply gaining scale. India’s linguistic richness, with dozens of languages, dialects, and regional variations, is seen as an extremely valuable resource for improving language models. Local interactions help fill gaps in training data, especially in communication patterns that are underrepresented in traditional datasets.

The competition intensified further with Perplexity’s entry, which began offering its Pro plan—valued at $200 per year—free for 12 months to Airtel customers. As a result, India now accounts for more than a third of the company’s global daily active users, compared to only 7% the previous year.[wpdiscuz]