OpenAI just made its biggest bet on India yet. Starting November 4, the company will hand out free year-long access to ChatGPT Go — a move that puts every marketing executive on notice about how aggressively AI companies are fighting for the world’s fastest-growing digital market.
OpenAI will offer its ChatGPT Go plan to users in India who sign up during a limited promotional period starting November 4. For those tracking ad spend, customer acquisition costs, and market share battles, this isn’t charity — it’s calculated warfare in a market where the prize is 1.4 billion potential users.
The timing reveals a sophisticated strategy. The announcement coincides with OpenAI’s DevDay Exchange developer conference in Bengaluru on November 4, where the company is expected to make India-specific announcements aimed at local developers and enterprises. Launching a product alongside an ecosystem play simultaneously? That’s textbook platform marketing.
The US$17 billion prize
India’s AI market is expected to triple in value to US$17 billion by 2027, according to a Boston Consulting Group white paper.The country is OpenAI’s second-largest market and one of its fastest-growing, prompting the company to establish a New Delhi office in August and build a local team.
The competitive context makes this offer significant. The move follows similar strategies by Perplexity and Google, which both provided free access to premium AI features in India recently to attract users.
Perplexity partnered with Airtel to offer free Perplexity Pro subscriptions to the telecom operator’s 360 million subscribers, while Google introduced a free one-year AI Pro plan for students.
Battle lines drawn
The numbers tell the story. In the second quarter of 2025, Perplexity’s downloads in India surged 600% year-on-year to 2.8 million, while OpenAI’s ChatGPT saw a 587% increase, reaching 46.7 million downloads.
However, ChatGPT maintains a significant lead in absolute numbers, with 19.8 million monthly active users, versus 3.7 million for Perplexity. The ChatGPT Go programme answers an insight from the market. Launched in India in August, the tier was developed following user feedback calling for more affordable access to ChatGPT’s advanced features.
In its first month, the number of paid ChatGPT subscribers in India more than doubled, demonstrating strong product-market fit. Following the response, OpenAI expanded ChatGPT Go to nearly 90 countries worldwide.
What marketers should know
ChatGPT Go delivers substantial value. The plan provides higher message limits, more image generation, longer memory, and the ability to upload more files and images. At the standard pricing of less than US$5 per month, the 12-month giveaway represents a serious customer acquisition investment.
Nick Turley, Vice President and Head of ChatGPT, stated: “Since initially launching ChatGPT Go in India a few months ago, the adoption and creativity we’ve seen from our users has been inspiring….
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