India has turn into ChatGPT’s largest market on this planet by weekly lively customers, overtaking america, and its consumer base within the nation has doubled since January 2026, OpenAI India MD Prabhjeet Singh mentioned.

Singh, who was named OpenAI’s first managing director for India in June, made the remarks in an interview with The Financial Instances, his first since taking the position. He studies to Kiran Mani, OpenAI’s managing director for Asia Pacific.

“In lower than a yr, it is doubling. It simply provides you a way of (how) individuals are starting to search out relevance and deep use instances,” Singh mentioned.

Weekly lively customers counts anybody who opens ChatGPT not less than as soon as in every week, throughout the free and paid tiers, and it’s the solely utilization quantity OpenAI discloses.

The AI big put India above 100 million weekly customers in February this yr, when CEO Sam Altman mentioned India was its second-largest market and had the biggest variety of scholar customers of ChatGPT wherever.

However how second place turned first

The climb has been constructed on worth and presence. OpenAI introduced plans to open its first India workplace in Delhi NCR in August 2025 and commenced hiring domestically. The identical month it launched ChatGPT Go, a plan priced at underneath $5 a month for a market the place its $20 Plus tier had few takers, then made Go free for a yr to Indian customers who signed up from 4 November 2025.

On the India AI Influence Summit in February, OpenAI launched an umbrella programme called OpenAI for India and mentioned it will add workplaces in Mumbai and Bengaluru. Altman mentioned then that 18 to 24-year-olds account for practically half of ChatGPT utilization within the nation.

Singh’s focus now’s the customers nonetheless exterior that base, and he places the barrier at language and entry.

“Most of India truly would not use English as a major. So actual massive focus is on Hindi and vernacular,” he mentioned.

That’s being dealt with in 3 ways: extra Indian-language voice assist, product work geared toward entry-level Android telephones with little spare reminiscence, and Android-first improvement relatively than constructing for iPhones and porting later.

The compute going up behind the customers

Serving that many individuals from servers overseas has limits, and OpenAI has signed up Indian capability to repair it. Its partnership with TCS’ HyperVault information centre enterprise starts at 100 megawatts and could scale to 1 gigawatt, underneath OpenAI’s Stargate infrastructure programme, making OpenAI the primary buyer of the enterprise.

Singh mentioned OpenAI would take into account taking extra capability because it comes on-line.

The purpose of native capability is information residency, the requirement that buyer information keep contained in the nation, which banks, insurers and authorities departments in India more and more insist on earlier than signing something.

TCS secured a dedication of about $1 billion from non-public fairness agency TPG in November 2025 to construct HyperVault out. OpenAI’s fashions are additionally provided by Amazon Bedrock for inference inside India, so requests are processed domestically.

Singh mentioned enterprises, world functionality centres and startups are shifting from pilots to manufacturing deployments, naming JioHotstar and Cars24.

Notably, India can also be among the many largest and fastest-growing markets for Codex, OpenAI’s coding agent, he mentioned, with loads of the developer use coming from tier-II cities.

The market the place monetisation trails adoption

The hole between customers and income is the sharpest reality about India for each AI firm.

India’s cellular app market hit a report $345 million in client spending within the June quarter, up 35% year-on-year, according to Sensor Tower, the quickest development amongst main markets whereas US app income fell 3%. ChatGPT was probably the most downloaded app in India, with cumulative downloads previous 358 million.

The competitors is seen in the identical information. Anthropic’s Claude ranked fifth amongst generative AI apps in India by downloads however second by income, with its India income up greater than 19-fold year-on-year within the quarter. ChatGPT and Claude collectively took practically 83% of India’s AI app income.

Singh mentioned paid subscriptions are anticipated to develop as customers discover extra worth, however that the speedy precedence is increasing AI’s influence relatively than conversion. The opposite lever is promoting. OpenAI started exhibiting adverts to logged-in adults on the Free and Go plans on the finish of August, and is now increasing them in India.

Singh mentioned adverts would assist assist free and lower-priced entry, that advertisers wouldn’t get entry to customers’ private info, and that adverts wouldn’t affect ChatGPT’s solutions.

To get Indian manufacturers in, OpenAI has partnered with Razorpay, introduced on 5 October. Razorpay’s development advertising platform Interact prepares product catalogues, runs and measures campaigns, and makes use of an AI agent constructed on ChatGPT Adverts practices with human assessment on greater calls. Early manufacturers embrace Tanishq, Fastrack, Traya, Tata Neu, Rivaah by Tanishq, Shaadi.com, Axis Max Life, Palmonas and NMIMS.

“The following buyer might not seek for a product or scroll by an advert; they could merely ask an AI assistant for assist deciding what to purchase,” Rahul Kothari, COO of Razorpay, mentioned within the announcement.

Funds are the piece nonetheless lacking

Singh mentioned bulletins on UPI and funds are anticipated within the coming weeks.

In October 2025, NPCI, OpenAI and Razorpay launched agentic payments in a pilot that lets a consumer purchase and pay inside a ChatGPT dialog. It runs on two newer UPI options: UPI Reserve Pay, which blocks a set amount of cash for later debits to a selected service provider, and UPI Circle, which helps delegated and shared cost authorisations.

Axis Financial institution and Airtel Funds Financial institution have been the banking companions and BigBasket among the many first retailers.

Singh additionally backed clear AI regulation to construct confidence amongst shoppers, enterprises and builders, and mentioned OpenAI is participating with authorities companies, banks and monetary establishments on defending essential infrastructure from misuse of AI brokers.