Anthropic taps former Microsoft India MD to lead Bengaluru expansion

Anthropic has appointed former Microsoft India executive Irina Ghose to head its Indian operations as the US AI startup prepares to open an office in Bengaluru. The move underlines how India is becoming a key battleground for AI companies looking to expand beyond the US into major growth markets.

Ghose brings deep operational experience in big tech to this role. She worked at Microsoft for 24 years before stepping down in December 2025. Her appointment gives Anthropic a seasoned executive with local business and government relations who is gearing up to establish an on-the-ground presence in one of the world’s fastest-growing AI markets.

India has become one of Anthropic’s strategically most important markets, with the country already the second largest user base for Claude and usage skewed heavily towards technical and work-related tasks, including software development. Archrival OpenAI is also sharpening its focus on the market with plans to open an office in New Delhi – a sign that India is fast becoming one of the most hotly contested arenas in the global race to commercialize generative AI.

While India offers enormous scale – with more than a billion internet subscribers and more than 700 million smartphone users – converting that reach into meaningful revenue has proven difficult, prompting AI companies to experiment with aggressive pricing and promotions. OpenAI last year introduced ChatGPT Go, its sub-$5 plan aimed at attracting Indian users, and later made it available for free in the country for a year.

A similar dynamic is playing out for Anthropic: The Claude app posted a 48% increase in downloads in India in September, reaching around 767,000 installs, while consumer spending rose 572% to $195,000 per month, according to Appfigurs – still modest compared to the US, where spending was $2.5 million in September.

Anthropic has stepped up its involvement in India at the highest level. CEO Dario Amodei visited in October and met with business leaders and lawmakers, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to discuss the company’s expansion plans and increasing adoption of its instruments. Anthropic had also explored a potential partnership with billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries to broaden access to Claude, as TechCrunch previously reported. However, Reliance eventually struck a deal with Google to offer its Gemini AI Pro plan for free to Jio subscribers. That move came as rival Bharti Airtel teamed up with Perplexity to bundle access to its premium plan, underscoring how the Indian telecom giants have become critical distribution gatekeepers in the race to scale AI services for consumers.

In a LinkedIn post announcing the move, Ghose said said she would focus on working with Indian enterprises, developers and startups adopting Claude for “mission-critical” use cases, pointing to the growing demand for what she described as “high-trust, enterprise-grade AI.” She added that AI tailored to local languages ​​could be a “force multiplier” in sectors including education and healthcare, signaling Anthropic’s intention to deepen adoption beyond early technology adopters to larger institutions and the public sector.

The push from Anthropic, OpenAI and Perplexity comes as India’s own GenAI ecosystem is still relatively in its early stages. While the country has a large pool of software talent and a rapidly growing base of AI users, it has produced few startups building large base models, with investors instead largely backing application layer companies rather than investing the size of capital typically required to train frontier systems.

The appointment also comes ahead of the Indian AI Impact Summit 2026 in February, which will be attended by the Indian government expected to bring AI startups, global CEOs and industry experts together to discuss the next phase of AI implementation in the country. The summit is part of New Delhi’s broader efforts to show support for domestic AI development and position India as a serious player in the global AI landscape as competition increases in major markets.

Anthropic is also building out its India team with vacancies for roles such as executives of startups and enterprise accounts, as well as partner sales manager, signaling a push to deepen its go-to-market efforts and target Indian companies and startups as customers as it expands its presence in the country.

For Anthropic, the appointment adds senior local leadership as it looks to transform India’s rising usage into a sustainable business, entering a market where distribution partnerships, pricing pressures and corporate adoption will determine which AI players will emerge as winners in the long term.