India’s AI growth pushes companies to commerce near-term income for customers

Tech giants’ efforts to ramp up AI adoption in India could also be about to hit a turning level, as corporations finish free promotions with hopes to transform the world’s fourth-largest financial system right into a windfall of paid subscribers.

India grew to become the world’s largest marketplace for generative AI app downloads in 2025, in keeping with market intelligence agency Sensor Tower, widening its lead over the U.S. as installs jumped 207% year-over-year.

Corporations together with OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity rolled out prolonged free premium provides to speed up person progress within the value delicate market. Main AI companies have additionally backed India in its push to change into a worldwide synthetic intelligence hub. A serious AI summit in New Delhi final week was attended by leaders together with OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai — an indication of the nation’s rising weight within the world AI race.

Now, a few of these early promotional pushes are winding down. Perplexity ended its bundled Professional provide with Indian telco Airtel in January, whereas OpenAI’s free ChatGPT Go entry in India is no longer available, probably setting the stage for a clearer check of what number of newly acquired customers convert to paying subscribers.

Regardless of sturdy obtain progress, India nonetheless generates a disproportionately small share of AI app income, accounting for about 1% of in-app purchases even because it drives roughly 20% of worldwide GenAI app downloads, in keeping with the Sensor Tower information shared with TechCrunch, highlighting the monetization problem in one of many trade’s fastest-growing markets.

GenAI app adoption in India accelerated sharply by means of 2025, with downloads peaking in September and October at year-over-year progress charges of about 320% and 260%, respectively, in keeping with the info. But the surge in utilization didn’t totally translate into income features. In November and December 2025, AI app in-app buy income in India fell 22% and 18% month over month, respectively. ChatGPT’s income dropped much more sharply — down 33% and 32% over the identical interval following the November launch of free sub-$5 ChatGPT Go entry — reflecting the near-term impression of aggressive promotional pushes.

ChatGPT nonetheless instructions greater than 60% of GenAI in-app income in India, that means shifts in its pricing technique can considerably affect general market efficiency.

Alongside promotional pushes, Sensor Tower attributed the surge in GenAI app adoption in India final yr to a mixture of new product launches, together with the debut of platforms reminiscent of DeepSeek, Grok, and Meta AI, in addition to upgrades to main chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity. Viral curiosity in AI-generated content material additionally helped gas adoption, with content material creation and enhancing instruments accounting for seven of the 20 most downloaded GenAI apps in India in 2025.

The person surge has been equally pronounced. India accounted for about 19% of the worldwide person base of main AI assistant apps in 2025, forward of the U.S. at 10%, Sensor Tower stated. ChatGPT continues to dominate the Indian market by month-to-month lively customers, although rivals together with Google’s Gemini and Perplexity have additionally seen fast progress following promotional provides. ChatGPT was essentially the most downloaded GenAI app in India and globally in 2025, in keeping with earlier Sensor Tower information. Earlier this month, OpenAI’s CEO stated that the chatbot now has greater than 100 million weekly lively customers in India.

The promotional push in India displays a broader technique by AI companies to cut back pricing friction in a extremely value-conscious market, betting that early person adoption and engagement will translate into stronger long-term retention as soon as free entry intervals expire, stated Sneha Pandey, insights analyst at Sensor Tower.

India’s enchantment lies in its large digital base. The nation has greater than a billion web customers and round 700 million smartphone homeowners, making it one of many largest potential markets for AI companies globally and a crucial battleground for person progress.

Nonetheless, person engagement in India nonetheless trails extra mature markets. In 2025, customers of main AI chatbot apps within the U.S. spent about 21% extra time per week on the apps than their counterparts in India and logged 17% extra classes on common, per Sensor Tower.

“AI in-app revenues will probably see significant however gradual enchancment as customers change into extra deeply built-in into these platforms, making sustained engagement paramount,” Pandey instructed TechCrunch.

She added that pricing stress in India is prone to stay elevated given the nation’s younger and value-conscious person base, making lower-cost tiers, telecom bundles, and micro-transaction fashions necessary for long-term retention.

ChatGPT remained the clear market chief in India getting into 2026, with 180 million month-to-month lively customers in January, per Sensor Tower, adopted by Google’s Gemini with 118 million, Perplexity with 19 million, and Meta AI with 12 million. The figures underline each the dimensions of India’s AI alternative and the rising problem for companies to transform fast person adoption into sustained income.

Google, OpenAI, and Perplexity didn’t reply to requests for feedback.