India is ChatGPT's largest market, OpenAI says; users doubled since January

OpenAI India's head says India is ChatGPT's largest market by weekly users, doubled since January, with UPI plans coming. Claims, context and gaps.

India has become ChatGPT's largest market in the world by weekly active users, and the local user base has doubled since January 2026, according to OpenAI India managing director Prabhjeet Singh, as reported by Inc42 on 3 November 2026. The claim comes from the company and no user number was given, so it can be checked only against an earlier figure: in February, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said India had about 100 million weekly users, then second only to the United States. The same interview points to payments, advertising and data-centre plans that matter to Indian businesses.

What OpenAI said

Inc42 reports that Singh credited the growth to Indian users building ChatGPT into their daily workflows. The report says India's weekly active users are now the largest of any country and have doubled since January. No new total was published. That leaves a real ambiguity: if the "doubled" figure is measured from a January level, and if the 100 million that Altman cited in February was roughly in line with it, then the present figure could be well above 100 million, but we cannot compute it, and the company has not stated it. Treat "doubled" as a company statement.

The interview also lists what OpenAI is doing in India. It has a partnership with the data-centre business HyperVault of the Tata group's TCS that starts at 100 megawatts of capacity and could grow to 1 gigawatt, which is ten times as much. OpenAI's models are available through Amazon's Bedrock service so companies can process data inside India. It is building Indian-language features and developing for Android first, to reach people outside the big cities. It has opened an office in the Delhi region and plans offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru.

How India got here

TechCrunch reported in February that ChatGPT India had about 100 million weekly active users and was OpenAI's second-largest user base after the United States, and that India had the largest number of student users in the world. A weekly active user is a person who opens the service at least once in a week, a generous measure compared with someone who uses it every day.

OpenAI opened a New Delhi office in August 2025 and launched ChatGPT Go in India the same month, a cheaper plan priced under $5. TechCrunch also reports that OpenAI later made Go free for one year for Indian users, starting in October 2025. That detail is important for reading the user numbers: a large share of Indian users may be on a free plan, which grows users without growing revenue.

Competitors have chased the same people. Google offered Indian students a free one-year subscription to its AI Pro plan in September 2025, and its education vice president said in January 2026 that India has the world's highest use of Gemini for learning. Anthropic has said it plans an office in India. The result is a market where the biggest AI companies compete on price and free offers more than on features.

Where the money might come from

Singh told Inc42 that paid subscriptions should grow over time but that the immediate priority is expanding access. The two revenue routes in the report are advertising and payments.

On advertising, ads are expanding in India through a partnership with the payments company Razorpay, which helps brands such as Tanishq and Tata Neu build campaigns on ChatGPT. Singh said advertisers will not get access to users' personal data and that ads will not influence the model's answers. Those are the company's assurances, and the report gives no detail on how they are enforced.

On payments, the report says announcements related to UPI, the Unified Payments Interface, are expected "in the coming weeks." We do not know what they will be. A reasonable guess is that Indian users could pay for subscriptions or buy through ChatGPT using UPI, but that is our speculation, not something OpenAI has said. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which runs UPI, was not mentioned in the report.

For businesses, the report says companies, global capability centres (the India units of multinational firms) and start-ups are moving from pilots to production, with JioHotstar and Cars24 cited as examples. India is also described as one of the largest and fastest-growing markets for Codex, OpenAI's coding tool.

What is not known and what to be careful about

The report leaves several gaps. There is no actual user total, no breakdown between free and paid users, no revenue figure for India, and no date for the UPI announcements. "Largest market" is measured by weekly active users, not by revenue, and a country with a very large free base can be first on one measure and far lower on the other. TechCrunch noted in February that India's price-sensitive market and infrastructure limits make making money harder than in richer countries.

There is also a matter of independence. The figures come from OpenAI, we did not find an independent count, and the Inc42 report is the only source for the "largest market" claim in this edition. We could not verify it against OpenAI's own statement.

Altman, in the February interview, also warned about the risk that uneven access could concentrate the economic gains of AI among a few people, writing that India "risks forfeiting a vital opportunity" if it does not act. The IndiaAI Mission, a government programme, aims to expand computing capacity and help start-ups and public services adopt AI.

What it means for businesses, workers and regulators

For Indian businesses, the clearest implication is that a customer or employee is now likely to have used a chatbot already. Firms that serve them, in banking, insurance and shopping, should expect questions and complaints to come drafted by AI, and should decide how their own staff may use these tools with customer data. For lenders and fintechs, the mention of UPI hints at future ways to pay for AI services and at AI-driven shopping, but the details are unknown.

For workers, a user base this large suggests that AI skills are becoming a normal expectation, though the reports do not measure productivity gains. For regulators, a foreign company holding the largest base of Indian AI users raises questions on data location, advertising disclosure and consumer protection; the in-country processing through Bedrock and the HyperVault tie-up address part of this, but the report does not discuss rules.

Use the simulator to see how a small share of paying users turns into revenue. The 100 million weekly users is the February figure reported by TechCrunch; the paid share and monthly price are examples, since OpenAI has published neither for India. The price is set just under the $5 ceiling TechCrunch gave for ChatGPT Go.

What to watch next

The first marker is the UPI-related announcement OpenAI says will come in the coming weeks. Watch also for an actual user total, for details of the ad partnership and its safeguards, for the Mumbai and Bengaluru offices, and for the pace of the HyperVault capacity beyond its first 100 megawatts. The rival moves from Google and Anthropic in India are the competitive test.

Key takeaways

- OpenAI India's managing director says India is ChatGPT's largest market by weekly active users and that its Indian user base has doubled since January 2026. - No new user total was given; in February Altman said India had about 100 million weekly users, second to the United States, so the claim is unverified. - OpenAI cites a data-centre tie-up with TCS's HyperVault from 100 megawatts, UPI announcements due in weeks, and ads through a Razorpay partnership. - A free one-year ChatGPT Go offer for Indian users means user growth may be well ahead of revenue growth. - Figures come from the company and the Inc42 report is the only source of the new claims.

Sources

- [Inc42: India becomes ChatGPT's largest market globally, user base doubles since January](https://inc42.com/buzz/india-becomes-chatgpts-largest-market-globally-user-base-doubles-since-january/) - [TechCrunch: India has 100M weekly active ChatGPT users, Sam Altman says](https://www.techcrunch.com/2026/02/15/india-has-100m-weekly-active-chatgpt-users-sam-altman-says/)

Tags: OpenAI ChatGPT India AI adoption UPI