The top three of the global AI race namely OpenAI, Google and Perplexity recently rolled out a list of heavily discounted offers to capture the emerging Indian consumer market.
The stream of free AI offers began in November this year, when Google started giving its $400 Gemini AI Pro subscription for free for 18 months to 500 million customers of Reliance Jio, India’s biggest telecom player.
Google’s move was soon followed by Sam Altman backed Open AI unveiling its ‘ free ChatGPT Go plan’ exclusively for Indian users. The much welcomed Go plan offers extended but not unlimited usage compared with existing plans, free for a year in India. The same plan incurs monthly charges of $54 worldwide.
Early download data compiled by Reuters suggests a jump in usage due to the free plans, with daily active users of ChatGPT in India surging 607% year-on-year to 73 million as of last week – more than double the number in the U.S.
Why is Bigtech offering these free offers only to India?
As per data posted by Senson Towers, India represents the second-biggest smartphone market across the world with a little over 730 million devices. Following its partnership with Reliance, Gemini’s daily users in India rose 15% in November to touch 17 million last week, compared to 3 million in the U.S., the data showed.
Meanwhile, Chennai-based Aravind Srinavas has also made its Pro tool free for Indian users for a year in partnership with Bharti Airtel. It says the plan gives unlimited access to its most advanced research tools. The same plan has been priced at 500$ per year for non-Indian users.
A recent report by Reuters suggests that the big tech players recently launched a host of discounted offers to acquire India relevant, rich multilingual data from the world’s most populous nation to further provide advance training for their AI models.
As per multiple AI specialists interviewed by Reuters, the training data generated by Indian users, characterised by a mix of languages and dialects is supposed to act as a critical stress test that will help AI models better map communication patterns that are largely absent from the existing data.
Surge in userbase for Perplexity and OpenAI
India now accounts for more than a third of Perplexity’s global daily active users, up from just 7% last year, Sensor Tower data showed. ChatGPT recorded consistent user registrations with 46% of its monthly users opening the app daily in India in November, compared to 20% for Perplexity and 14% for Gemini.
Commenting on the firm’s move to unveil the free ChatGPT Go offer in India, OpenAI’s India executive, Pragya Misra, said that the decision was part of ‘OPEN AI’s continued India-first commitment’ and to make tools more accessible to everyone.
