While OpenAi has consolidated its leadership in the United States, perplexity is taking a different route, silently expanding to India to compete in the next phase of adoption of AI. The search startup focused on the search is quickly adding millions of users in the second Internet market and larger smartphones in the world, placing ITELF for a mass market scale.
This week, perplexity Associated with Bharti AurtelThe second largest telecommunications operator in India after Reliance Jio, to offer a free 12 -month perplexity subscription normally valued from $ 200 to 360 million Airstel subscribers. Aurtel confirmed to TechCrunch that the agreement is exclusive, which means that no other telecommunications company in the country can offer perplexity services, including free access, to its subscribers.
The Airtel Association is one of the significant movements of Perplexity Must, but in a global expansion strategy that includes associations with more than 25 telecommunications worldwide, including those recently announced with SoftBank in Japan and SK Telecom in South Korea. It is reduced to volume. India, the most populous country in the world, brings a massive market than the Startup based in San Francisco will not find in other geographies.
Perplexity is already winning a great traction in the country. In the second quarter, Perplexity downloads in India increased 600% year after year to 2.8 million, cordination to data from the Tower of Exclusive Sensors with TechCrunch. In comparison, Openai chatgpt saw an increase of 587%, reaching 46.7 million downloads in the same period.
The growth trend also extended to active users: perplexity monthly active users (MAU) in India increased by 640% year after year in the second quarter, while the Chatgpt MAU grew 350%. India was also the Larst market for Mous for perplexity in the last quarter, according to the sensor tower. However, Chatgpt maintained a significant advantage in absolute numbers, with 19.8 million maus versus 3.7 million per perplexity.
On the basis of previous associations, perplexity has legs working to take advantage of the Indian user base to jump to Western markets, where Openai dominates subscribed subscribed. Earl this year, perplexity associated With the Indian giant of Fintech Paytm to sacrifice access to his search with AI through the PayTM application, which has been about 500 million downloads and is among the The three best applications on the Unified Payment Interface of the Indian Government Network, processing more than 1.2 billion transactions worth more than ₹ 1.34,000 million rupees (approximately $ 15.6 billion).
The perplexity CEO, Aravind Srinivas, also has tasks directly steps to expand in India. In January, he announced Plans to hire an Indian executive In the country, which was then suspended after receiving a “Passenger Via” Response. Hello Announced an investment of $ 1 million And a five -hour commitment a week of his time with a group of group construction in India.
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The startup has also discussed internally offering its AI search engine to Indian students to increase their scope, sources told TechCrunch.
A reason why perplexity sees India as a key growth market is relatively Limited number of new companiesparticularly in the space for the search for AI. At the same time, the country has a large and active base of technology expert users, a fact that has just caused the archirrival of Perplexity, Google, to launch search functions with AI as well as Ai fashion and General description of AI In India before many other markets.
Monetizing that great user base is still a challenge. The perplexity is still very behind the chatgpt worldwide in terms of income, even when both sacrifice the same initial price of $ 20 per month. In the second quarter, purchase income in the chatgpt application increased 731% year after year to $ 773 million, while perplexity saw an increase of 300%, reaching $ 8 million, by sensor tower.
The challenge of income is particularly acute in India, where consumers are notoriatry Pricing. Even so, there are promising signs. Chatgpt saw an 800% increase year after year in purchases in the application to $ 9 million in the country in the second quarter. Perplexity has not generated any remarkable income in the application of India, but the startup has space to expand its subscriber base paid through India. Agreements such as Airtel could help effective perplexity to increase its subscriber base, short -term strap.
Strategic associations in markets such as India could help perplexity to attract the attention of investors who value user growth and geographical diversity. But to turn that attention into a long -term support, the startup must demonstrate that it can convert its income -expansion user base.
Srinivas did not respond to comments requests.
