Start-Up, Speak Up: How One Indian Brain is Rewriting the AI Power Game

Perplexity AI, the San Francisco-based company co-founded by 31-year-old Indian-origin entrepreneur Aravind Srinivas, has dominated India's App Store to become the most downloaded app, beating ChatGPT and Google Gemini. The rapid growth is fueled by a strategic tie-up with telecom giant Airtel, offering 360 million customers a free subscription for a year to Perplexity Pro valued at Rs 17,000.

Critical milestones and strategic steps

- Perplexity Pro provides access to sophisticated models such as GPT-4.1, Claude, and Grok 4, as well as image generation and coding capabilities
- Airtel's bundling of Perplexity Pro via its Thanks app has seen huge download surges, particularly on iOS
- The app is currently the top one in India's App Store, overtaking the longtime champions ChatGPT and Gemini
- Srinivas confirmed that India is now one of Perplexity's top three international markets.

Why the Airtel deal is significant

- Airtel's plan, unlike Google's Gemini Pro student-student plan, provides coverage to students, professionals, and researchers
- The agreement includes pre-release access to Perplexity's invite-only Comet browser, intended to be an abstraction layer on top of chatbots
- Airtel Wynk Music integration and in-app browser increase reach among India's mobile-first audience.

Plans for expansion and international reach

- Perplexity downloads in India increased 600 percent quarter over quarter to 2.8 million
- Indian monthly active users grew 640 percent to become its largest user base market
- Perplexity is worth 18 billion dollars globally, with recent investment of 100 million dollars
- Meta and Apple reportedly showed interest in buying the company.

Challenges and future prospects

- Although posting user growth, Perplexity trails ChatGPT in revenue, particularly in price-conscious economies such as India - Srinivas is committed to creating a search-first experience, where citation-based answers are preferred to chatbot-style answers - The startup's telco and browser initiatives in Japan and South Korea indicate a larger global expansion strategy.

 Sources: Economic Times, TechCrunch, Free Press Journal, ABP Live, Moneycontrol, The Outpost AI, Bloomberg News