Индия на пороге ИИ-революции: как миллиард пользователей меняет правила игры India on the Brink of an AI Revolution: How a Billion Users is Changing the Game

Sam Altman sees a bright future for India. He claims that the implementation of AI in the country is «unprecedented globally,» as reported by The Economist.

India is now OpenAI’s second-largest market by user numbers and is poised to take the lead soon. In August, the company launched an affordable local subscription priced at $4.6 per month. In contrast, the cheapest plan elsewhere costs $20.

Later in 2025, the company plans to open an office in New Delhi, and Altman is expected to visit India at the end of September. According to reports, he will unveil plans for establishing a data center in the country during his trip.

Other tech giants are also eyeing the nation:

This «battle» promises Indian consumers access to cutting-edge solutions at lower prices. For AI startups, the advantage lies in reaching and retaining hundreds of millions of users, along with the data they generate.

The opportunities are immense. The country boasts approximately 900 million internet users, second only to China. However, unlike the PRC, India is open to American tech firms.

Google’s Android powers over 90% of smartphones in the nation. Meta’s WhatsApp has more than 500 million active users. The Indian e-commerce landscape is similarly dominated by American giants like Amazon and Flipkart (Walmart).

Nevertheless, AI startups may struggle to generate substantial profits in this market. Many tech companies offer lower prices locally. For instance, a Netflix subscription in India is only $1.69 per month, compared to $7.99 in the U.S.

While this isn’t critical for cloud services with low overheads, processing AI requests proves to be costly. Data processing for a standard user costs around $0.07 per million tokens, and one query can consume hundreds or thousands of tokens. These costs are the same whether in Bangalore or Silicon Valley.

Requests to ChatGPT demand roughly ten times more computational power than Google. Generating an image using AI requires as much electricity as fully charging a smartphone.

Beyond energy, data centers consume significant amounts of water for cooling—the process requires about 500 milliliters for every 5-50 questions posed to ChatGPT.

Dmitry Shevelenko, Chief Commercial Officer at Perplexity, acknowledged that offering the service for free for a year is costly, but the company has time to «establish itself» and convert users into paying clients.

He noted that India exhibits one of the highest engagement levels among the countries where Perplexity has conducted tests. In five years, it is expected to become «an attractive subscription market.»

Subscriptions are not the only incentive. India’s internet user base is vast, diverse, and chaotic, encompassing individuals from numerous linguistic groups, making it an ideal «testing ground» for new products and observing user behavior on a massive scale.

Companies have begun to notice that Indian users prefer interacting with AI models rather than typing their queries. This trend likely stems from low literacy levels—many individuals are unable to read or write, according to The Economist.

AI startups have largely exhausted major publicly available datasets that are useful for training and improving models. Thus, Indian users have become a valuable new source of information.

A robust digital infrastructure known as India Stack has been established in the country, integrating government services like biometric identification and digital payments. As a result, hundreds of millions of people have gone online, with their queries helping to fine-tune neural networks.

India’s regulatory environment also fosters this development. Conark Bhandari from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace pointed out that regulations do not restrict companies from transferring data abroad.

«There is nothing in the legislation that prevents the use of information collected in India for training models overseas,» he added.

Indian users are welcoming the arrival of foreign AI companies, although some express concerns about the impact on local players and the long-term reliance on American platforms.

Concerns have intensified following former President Donald Trump’s imposition of high tariffs on goods from India. Venugopal Garre from Bernstein’s research firm believes that American companies, with their substantial resources and strong infrastructure, could «squash India’s prospects» in AI by deterring investments in local startups.

Altman, however, offers a more optimistic outlook. He believes the country might emerge as «one of the leaders of the AI revolution.» The only question is what kind of leader it chooses to be: a dominant force thanks to its vast user base or a creator of its own technologies?

It’s worth noting that the Indian startup QpiAI, which focuses on the joint application of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, secured $32 million in its latest Series A funding round, with the Indian government as a co-investor.