OpenAI to set up first India office, begins local hiring with ChatGPT push

Artificial intelligence company OpenAI on Friday said it will open its first office in India later this year as part of plans to deepen its presence in the country, its second-largest market by user numbers.

The Microsoft-backed company, which has been incorporated as a legal entity in India, has begun hiring a local team, OpenAI said in a statement.

“India has all ingredients to become a global AI leader—amazing tech talent, a world-class developer ecosystem, and strong government support through the India AI Mission,” Sam Altman, co-founder and chief executive of OpenAI, said.

“Opening our first office and building a local team is an important first step in our commitment to make advanced AI more accessible across the country and to build AI for India, and with India.”

The announcement comes just days after the company launched its most affordable monthly subscription plan, ChatGPT Go, priced at ₹399 in India.

“We just launched ChatGPT Go in India, a new subscription tier that gives users in India more access to our most popular features: 10x higher message limits, 10x more image generations, 10x more file uploads, and 2x longer memory compared with our free tier,” Nick Turley, Vice President and Head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, said in a post on X.

The plan also allows payments in Indian rupees and through UPI, and includes access to GPT-5, OpenAI’s flagship model.

The new offering comes at a time when the company faces stiff competition from rivals such as Google’s Gemini and AI startup Perplexity, which have rolled out free advanced plans in India.

India has the largest population of student users on ChatGPT, with weekly active users quadrupling over the past year, according to market data shared by the company.

The ₹399 ChatGPT Go plan provides users with enhanced tools, including expanded file analysis, advanced data processing with Python, longer memory for personalised conversations, and access to projects, tasks, and custom GPTs.

Subscriptions will be billed monthly and can be cancelled anytime, the company said. “Looking forward to making ChatGPT more affordable in India first, and then learning from feedback to expand to other countries,” Altman posted on X.