Observed Signal · Aug 18, 2026 · Partnership · Source: techcrunch · Impact: 3/5 · Sentiment: Positive
Perplexity’s Airtel bundle drove millions of Indian users
Perplexity partnered with Indian telecom Airtel in July 2025 to give Airtel customers a free 12-month Perplexity Pro subscription. The promotion produced a large surge in downloads and monthly active users in India (5.9M downloads in July 2025; 56M downloads across seven months; MAU peak ~22M in October). As the earliest free subscriptions began expiring in mid-2026, in-app purchase and subscription revenue in India rose, suggesting some users either converted to paid plans or did not cancel auto-renewals. Independent app-intelligence firms Sensor Tower and Appfigures provided the usage and revenue estimates. The results are an early test of whether carrier-bundled free AI access can produce durable paying customers in India’s price-sensitive market.
Provides early empirical evidence that carrier-bundled free premium AI trials can dramatically grow user bases and may produce post-trial revenue in India, informing distribution and monetization strategies for AI app vendors.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- In July 2025 Perplexity partnered with Airtel to offer a free 12-month Perplexity Pro subscription to Airtel’s 360 million customers.
- Perplexity recorded 5.9 million app downloads in India in July 2025 and an estimated 56 million downloads during the seven months the offer was available.
- Monthly active users peaked at about 22 million in October and were nearly 14 million in July 2026, per Sensor Tower estimates.
- Sensor Tower estimates Perplexity’s in-app purchase and subscription revenue in India rose about 60% between February and mid-August compared with the period when the Airtel offer was available to new users.
- Appfigures estimates Perplexity’s monthly net mobile revenue in India grew from about $34,000 in January 2025 to $156,000 in July 2026, and an estimated $878,000 during the first seven months of 2026.
Connected Companies & Entities
6 Entities mapped“Perplexity spent the past year running one of the biggest AI growth experiments, giving its premium service away to customers of Indian tele...”
“Perplexity’s AI giveaway had an immediate impact, as it saw 5.9 million app downloads in India in July 2025, according to data Sensor Tower ...”
“Appfigures, another app intelligence firm, also found that the Airtel deal dramatically changed Perplexity’s trajectory in India....”
“In August 2025, OpenAI made its lower-priced ChatGPT Go plan free for a year in the country....”
“Google also followed Perplexity with a deal to offer its AI Pro subscription free for 18 months to eligible Reliance Jio users....”
“Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and others have increasingly chased Indian consumers with India-specific, lower-cost plans, free access, and dist...”
Ontology Mapping & Concepts
Related Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
India's AI Surge: Users Up, Revenue Down
India became the largest market for generative AI app downloads in 2025, driven by aggressive promotional offers from major AI firms to build user bases. Sensor Tower data cited by TechCrunch shows installs jumped 207% year‑over‑year, but India accounted for only about 1% of GenAI in‑app purchase revenue despite ~20% of downloads, highlighting a monetization gap. Companies including Perplexity and OpenAI have wound down extended free premium offers in India (Perplexity ended its Airtel bundle; free ChatGPT Go access is no longer available), creating a near‑term test of subscription conversion. Sensor Tower reported month‑over‑month revenue declines for AI apps in late 2025 and noted ChatGPT still drives a majority of GenAI in‑app revenue in India. Firms are exploring lower‑cost tiers, telco bundles and microtransactions to improve long‑term monetization in the price‑sensitive market.
India's App Market Shifts from Downloads to Payments
India's mobile app market recorded $345 million in consumer spending in Q2 2026, a 35% year-over-year increase, according to Sensor Tower. Growth is being driven by generative AI, streaming, and productivity apps rather than gaming, while quarterly downloads have held steady at about 6.3 billion. Wider adoption of digital payments such as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and digital wallets has reduced friction for in-app purchases, boosting subscriptions and premium services. Sensor Tower data shows OpenAI and Anthropic accounted for nearly 83% of AI app revenue in India during Q2, and non-gaming apps represented 68% of mobile app revenue in H1 2026. Appfigures notes subscription growth continues but at a slower pace after an AI-fueled surge.
Musk's Grok Bot to Use Rival AI Models Like Claude
Elon Musk announced that Grok Bot, an agent app from his AI unit (formerly xAI, now part of SpaceX and recently renamed SpaceXAI/SpaceXSI), will no longer rely solely on its own Grok models. Instead, it will pick 'the best back-end model for the respective task,' citing examples such as Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5, Midjourney, and Suno. The announcement, first reported by The Information, follows user complaints about access issues. This strategic shift acknowledges that xAI's models don't lead in all areas—for instance, Claude Opus 5.5 outperforms competitors on the Artificial Analysis ranking. The move mirrors a broader industry trend of multi-model routing, as seen with Microsoft's Copilot and Perplexity, and comes despite reports of SpaceX planning $40 billion in debt for Nvidia chips.
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