Perplexity sees India as a shortcut in its race against OpenAI

While OpenAi has cemented its lead in the US, Perplexity takes a different route – quietly expanding to India to compete in the next phase of AI adoption. The looking AI-Startup is quickly adding millions of users to the second largest internet and smartphone market in the world and positions itself for mass market scale.

This week, confuse Work together with Bharti AirtelThe second largest telecom operator from India after Reliance Jio, to offer a free 12-month perplexity pro-subscription, normally spoken $ 200 on all 360 million airtel subscribers. Airtel confirmed to WAN that the deal is exclusive, which means that no other Telco in the country can offer the services of Perfexity, including free access, to their subscribers.

The airtel partnership is one of the most important movements of Pertlexity, still in a worldwide expansion strategy that includes partnerships with more than 25 telco’s worldwide, including those recently announced with Softbank in Japan And SK Telecom in South Korea. It comes down to volume. India, the world’s most populated country, brings a mass market that will not find the startup based in San Francisco in other regions.

PerTlexity already has a major traction in the country. In Q2, the Downloads from Pertlexity in India rose by 600% on an annual basis to 2.8 million, according to Sensor Tower data that were exclusively shared with WAN. For comparison: OpenAi’s Chatgpt saw an increase of 587% and reached 46.7 million downloads in the same period.

The growth trend also extended to active users: the monthly active users (MAUs) from PerTlexity in India rose by 640% on an annual basis in Q2, while Chatgpt Mau’s grew by 350%. India was also the largest market by Mau’s for Parxity in the last quarter, per sensor tower. Chatgpt, however, maintained an important lead in absolute numbers, with 19.8 million MAUs versus 3.7 million for perplexity.

Building on earlier partnerships, Perplexity has worked to use the user base of India to jump the Western markets, where OpenAi dominates paid subscribers. Earlier this year, perplexity to collaborate With the Indian fintech giant Paytm to give access to its AI-driven search via the Paytm app, which has more than 500 million downloads and one of the IS Top-three apps on the Unified Payment Interface of the Indian Government Network, processes more than 1.2 billion transactions worth more than £ 1.34,000 crores (around $ 15.6 billion).

PerTlexity CEO Aravind Srinivas has also taken direct steps to expand in India. In January he announced Plans to hire an Indian director In the country, which he later put on hold after receiving a “Overwhelming” response. He further announced an investment of $ 1 million And a dedication of five hours a week of its time to a group building AI in India.

The startup has also discussed internally and offering its AI search engine to Indian students to grow its reach, sources told WAN.

One reason why perplexity of India regards an important growth market is the relatively limited number of local AI startups, in particular in the AI search room. At the same time, the country has a large and active basis of technically stated user-a fact that even the archrival of Perflexity, Google, has encouraged to launch AI-driven search functions, Ai -mode and AI overviews in India prior to many other markets.

Generating that large user base remains a challenge. PerTlexity remains far behind Chatgpt in terms of income worldwide, even if both offer the same starting price of $ 20 per month. In the second quarter, Chatgpt’s in-app purchase income fell by 731% on an annual basis to $ 773 million, while Pertlexity saw an increase of 300%, to $ 8 million, per sensor tower.

The income challenge is particularly acute in India, where consumers are notorious price sensitive. Yet there are promising signs. Chatgpt saw an increase of 800% on an annual basis in in-app purchases up to $ 9 million in the country in the second quarter. Perplexity has not generated a remarkable in-app income from India, but the startup has room to expand its paid subscriber base through India. Deals such as those with airtel can be stunned to effectively increase its subscriber base, at least in the short term.

Strategic partnerships in markets such as India can help perplexity to attract the attention of investors who appreciate the growth of users and geographical diversification. But to change that attention in the long term, the startup must show that it can convert its growing user base into income.

Srinivas did not respond to requests for comments.