India overtakes US as ChatGPT’s top market, OpenAI says

India now has more weekly ChatGPT users than any other country, including the United States, and the number of Indian users has doubled since January, OpenAI India managing director Prabhjeet Singh told The Economic Times. The interview ran on November 3 and was Singh's first with the media since he joined OpenAI in August. "In less than a year, it's doubling. It just gives you a sense of (how) people are beginning to find relevance and deep use cases," he said.economictimes.indiatimes.com

Singh did not give a new user count. In February, OpenAI said India had more than 100 million weekly ChatGPT users. At that time, CEO Sam Altman called India the company's second-largest market after the US. He also said India had the most student users of ChatGPT of any country, Indian Startup News reported. Singh separately told The Times of India that India is already ChatGPT's largest consumer market in the world.inc42.com+2

Price, language and local capacity

The growth followed OpenAI's push into India on price. In August 2025 it launched ChatGPT Go, a plan that costs less than $5 a month, and later made Go free for a year for Indian users who signed up from November 4, 2025, according to Indian Startup News. Singh said the next group of users depends on language and access. "Most of India actually doesn't use English as a primary. So real big focus is on Hindi and vernacular," he said. He also pointed to voice features and Android-first products designed for low-end phones.indianstartupnews.com

OpenAI is adding computing capacity inside India to support that demand. It has a partnership with the HyperVault data center business of TCS Tata Consultancy Services Limited that starts at 100 megawatts and could grow to 1 gigawatt. Its models are also available through Amazon Bedrock Amazon.com, Inc. ↗ 2.06%, which processes requests inside India, Indian Startup News reported. Singh said JioHotstar and Cars24 are among the companies that have moved from pilots to full deployments, Startup Feed reported.startupfeed.in+1

Turning users into revenue

Having the most users does not make India OpenAI's biggest source of revenue. None of the reports gave figures for Indian subscribers or revenue, FourWeekMBA noted. Competition for paying users is also growing. Anthropic's Claude ranked fifth among AI apps in India by downloads but second by revenue in the June quarter, according to Sensor Tower data cited by Indian Startup News.fourweekmba.com+1

OpenAI is adding advertising in India and has partnered with Razorpay to help Indian brands advertise on ChatGPT, Inc42 reported. Singh said announcements on UPI-linked payments are expected in the coming weeks. He added that ads will not give advertisers access to users' personal information or affect ChatGPT's answers.inc42.com