Jio Moment In AI Race? OpenAI, Perplexity, Google Unleash Discounts War In India

When OpenAI rolled out its lowest pricing model for ChatGPT in India at INR 399 a month, it seemed like a seminal moment for the country’s evolving AI landscape. 

ChatGPT Go, according to a post on X by Nick Turley who is OpenAI vice-president and head of ChatGPT, raises the message limits, image generations and file uploads by 10 times each, and doubles the memory from the free tier.

OpenAI also introduced a UPI payments feature for buying subscriptions – a well thought-out strategy to tame the digitally native young Indian consumers. 

While India has seen accelerated interest from the OpenAI leadership in recent times with respect to partnerships with local businesses, policy adherences and investments, the decision to revise its global prices for Indian consumers should not be seen in isolation.

The OpenAI move comes close on the heels of Aravind Srinavas-led Perplexity making its INR 17,000 annual subscription plan, Perplexity Pro, free for Airtel users last month. Around the same time, Google made its premium AI model, Gemini Pro, which was priced at INR 19,500 a year, free for students in India.

While we wonder why the world’s largest AI companies are moving to a discount-based strategy for India, especially when their basic model remains free and when they are yet to accept advertisements to make money, what turns out is that it is not merely a pricing war – there’s more to read between the lines. 

India, An Inexorable Beckoning  

The US is the largest market – both in terms of demand and investments – for AI, while India ranks seventh, according to consulting firm Spherical Insights. Sensor Tower Data shows that Indian users spent only $8 Mn on buying ChatGPT subscriptions since 2023, when Americans shelled out $330 Mn.

But, armed with an over-a-billion-strong smartphone-clad population and an internet userbase of more than 886 Mn, India makes the second-largest market for ChatGPT after the US. 

Accordingly, ChatGPT so far maintained the standard pricing for its lowest subscription tier, ChatGPT Plus, at  $20 a month. But as its competitors thrashed out a discount-led strategy for a 1.4 Bn-strong consumer market aged averagely at 25-35 years and an increasing disposable income, OpenAI made a deviation from its global standard pricing and came up with an India-specific pricing model.

Days before unleashing the lowest pricing, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a podcast with Zerodha’s Nikhil Kamath that India remained a huge market for AI companies for the engagement level and feedback cycles they have received from Indian consumers. 

India topped the installation tally for the ChatGPT app with 13.7% share in total app installs as of June 2025. Industry watchers, though, argued that the app installs were no indication of linear growth in revenues for the AI major.

Multiple stakeholders said that when it comes to attracting a consumer base in India, the price point has to be relatively lower than other geographies, while the subscription model will play out only in niche segments. 

Is that the reason why OpenAI is attempting to do a Netflix or recreate a Jio moment in India? 

Return Of The Jio Moment In India?

The entry of Reliance Jio had nearly democratised the Indian telecom market around 2015, bringing 4G data affordable for the masses, and paving the way for India to be the second-largest globally, with 1.2 Bn subscribers. 

Is the AI brigade bringing back the Jio moment 10 years on? The internet is flooded with industry watchers, analysts and other stakeholders drawing a parallel. 

The debate got a boost from the recent interaction OpenAI had with Reliance Industries for selling ChatGPT subscriptions on Jio platforms. The telecom giant had earlier entered into partnerships with Google and Meta for various business synergies. 

Ankush Sabharwal, founder of BharatGPT and CoRover.ai, however, believes that comparing the LLM model price war with the Jio-led disruption would be a fallacy. “Jio altered the internet consumption patterns in India by bringing down the price points. Even if those price points did not sustain, the internet consumption behaviour changed forever. To expect the same from ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini is not realistic,” he said. 

Unlike internet access, which solved a real world problem in a fragmented market like India, foundation models are yet to solve such large use case challenges. Adding to that, India will always remain hesitant to subscriptions, especially if they are just for content, he reasoned. 

“We cannot deny that the adoption has increased across consumers and enterprises. But, does that warrant the consumers to pay for GPT and other models? I don’t think so.” 

Sabharwal’s comments reflected the trend we saw just a few months back, when the popular ChatGPT image generation feature Ghibli art, available under paid models, saw huge traction, but could not scale subscriptions in India.

Beerud Sheth, who founded Gupshup, seemed more pragmatic. “Startups can build confidently on top of these models knowing there is already a ready and growing user base, and consumers benefit from getting high-value tools at much lower costs. Ultimately, lower pricing does not just increase adoption, it expands the ecosystem and makes AI a part of everyday life far more quickly than we might have otherwise expected,” he said.

Will It Shake The Foundation Model?

Indian companies have built large language models (LLMs) to compete with American giants, but industry analysts say that the adoption is particularly seen among enterprise-level clients, which are concerned about data storage and privacy. 

After the likes of Google, OpenAI and Perplexity adopted the deep discounting strategy, there are apprehensions of its impact on AI model-focussed companies. 

Sabharwal, however, said deep discounting was unlikely to impact native foundation model-based companies since their clientele were mostly businesses. “In most scenarios, the enterprises are ensuring that the data being fed to any LLM is stored on the premises and so they would be apprehensive on partnering with open source models. Open source models may work for mass adoption for sensitive business needs, but there could be privacy concerns.” 

A senior partner of a deeptech-focussed early stage fund said the ultimate disruption will not come from just lowering the prices of the LLMs, but from how finely these models are tuned to solve the challenges of both businesses as well as common users there.

“Just like Google’s earlier years in the search business, companies like OpenAI are testing use cases by absorbing the data, consumption patterns of Indian users and then building some feature which simplifies any user problem,” said the investor. 

The consumption is, for now, limited to knowledge workers across education, content and research who are using GPT and other LLMs. But, in India, the real market value lies beyond these users who come from different languages, cultures and ethnicities, he said. 

Will the OpenAI model prevail over the native models? 

In Data Security, Lies The Key

As AI companies go for deep discounting, the entry barriers to use LLMs are likely to be lowered. This, in turn, triggers concerns over the misuse of these technologies and the data stored in open source models.

“But affordability comes with its own shadow. When models become freely or cheaply available, the risks of misuse, plagiarism, misinformation, and even fraud also multiply, especially in a country where digital literacy is still uneven,” Jaspreet Bindra, CEO of AI & Beyond, told Inc42. “That’s why the onus is on providers to balance the reach with responsible guardrails.” 

Sheth of Gupshup, however, said that when more people are familiar with how AI works, they are less likely to be misled by misinformation or manipulated by AI-generated deepfakes. “The ripple effect is that a more AI-literate population creates stronger demand for innovation.” 

India’s news  publications and agencies are up in arms against OpenAI and various LLM-based AI firms alleging copyright violations on the basis of using copyrighted data for training the LLM models.

According to Sabharawal, the guardrails for data misuse and other ethical issues will come after the users and the technology achieve a scale. He believes any regulation coming in at this point would stifle innovations. 

Amid all the hype over LLMs and their adoption, Gnan.ai cofounder and CEO Ganesh Gopalan said one should look at the unlocking of real value which comes from making vertical and industry-oriented solutions for businesses.

As digital India debates over the prospects of OpenAI in the subscription regime, the success for ChatGPT in terms of revenue hinges on how well it corrects its bias and resolves what India needs.

[Edited By Kumar Chatterjee]