India Biggest Market For Perplexity: CEO Aravind Srinivas

India Is Our Biggest Market, Says Perplexity Cofounder Aravind Srinivas

SUMMARY

India is now the largest user base for AI-powered search startup Perplexity, driven by its partnership with Bharti Airtel, CEO and cofounder Aravind Srinivas said

The AI startup plans to launch a Perplexity fund in India and set up a local engineering team in Bengaluru or Hyderabad

This comes at a time when other AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic are also setting up their teams in the country

India has emerged as the biggest market by user base for Perplexity and it is now planning to set up a team in India, the AI startup’s cofounder and CEO Aravind Srinivas said.

In an interview with ET, Srinivas said that the startup has seen a rapid rise in its user base in the country following its partnership with telecom major Bharti Airtel. “India is our biggest market by user base right now and is growing very fast. The Airtel partnership continues on our carrier strategy that we have already run in other countries,” Srinivas said.

The CEO said that Perplexity quickly hit the number one rank on the ioS App Store after it announced its partnership with Airtel, which shows a high overlap with iPhone users.

According to data available on Semrush for the month of August, Perplexity had about 45.2 Mn visitors coming on the platform from India. This was almost double the 25.3 Mn users it attracted from the US.

Notably, in July, the AI major inked a pact with Airtel which provided it access to the telecom major’s 360 Mn user base. As part of the deal, Airtel provided a free one-year subscription of Perplexity Pro to its entire user base.

Looking at this massive traction from India, Perplexity is now looking to set up an engineering team in India.

“We are considering not only a policy presence in Delhi but also engineering. We are debating whether it should be Bengaluru or Hyderabad. India has great backend and infrastructure talent,” he was quoted as saying.

Moreover, the company is also planning to set up a local fund for India. However, Srinivas did not reveal much details about this fund.

This comes at a time when the adoption of AI is rising rapidly in the country, resulting in the country emerging as a large market for AI companies. As a result, the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic are also setting up their teams in the country.

OpenAI is planning to open its Delhi office soon and recently appointed Raghav Gupta as the country lead for its education vertical in India and Asia Pacific last month. The company also appointed former Meta marketing lead Sheeladitya Mohanty as marketing head for India in August.

OpenAI has also launched the OpenAI Learning Accelerator in partnership with the Ministry of Education and AICTE, and recently introduced ChatGPT Go at INR 399 per month.

Meanwhile, Anthropic is also looking to hire its India lead as part of its global expansion.