Prabhu RamIndia has long been the testing ground for affordability in global tech. From telecom pricing to streaming subscriptions and smartphone launches, the market has consistently served as the playground for low-cost models. The same playbook is now unfolding with artificial intelligence (AI).
OpenAI’s new ₹399 ChatGPT Go plan underscores this, showing how affordability continues to be the strongest lever for adoption in India. While it excludes GPT-5’s advanced reasoning, the plan expands access with higher message limits, more image generations, larger file uploads, and extended memory.
A Microsoft study highlights India as the world’s fastest-growing AI adopter—65% of Indians already use AI tools, nearly double the global average, with 30% of businesses embracing AI. That makes India a crucial market for OpenAI, second only to the US by user base.
Competition is heating up. Perplexity, via its Airtel partnership, is offering Pro access free to 390M subscribers. Google is embedding Gemini into Android and core services. Microsoft is positioning Copilot as the productivity layer across Office and Windows.
Digital literacy, specced-up value-for-money smartphones, and consistent internet access remain critical enablers for adoption. Trust also matters: concerns over privacy, accuracy, and bias could slow mainstream use, while the challenge of delivering context-rich, culturally relevant AI in Indic languages is far from solved.
Prabhu Ram, vice-president – Industry Research Group, CyberMedia Research
Source: Financial Express
