Editorial: Open AI’s smart India moves
As ChatGPT has almost become synonymous with AI among common people, OpenAI is luring users with an affordable plan called ChatGPT Go at Rs 399 per month
The American artificial intelligence company OpenAI, which has developed the popular AI bot ChatGPT, is making some smart moves. It will be opening its first office in India as it has ambitious plans to capture the vast Indian market. Its focus is on liaisoning and lobbying with the government, besides striking partnerships with developers, academia, and corporates. In the pipeline are an education summit and a developer day targeting two types of stakeholders important for its development and garnering business.
As ChatGPT has almost become synonymous with AI among common people, OpenAI is luring users with an affordable plan called ChatGPT Go at Rs 399 per month. The low-cost subscription model is tailor-made for the Indian market as it offers, at that price point, extended access to the flagship model GPT-5 and more image generation for work or play, and a host of other features, especially longer memory for more personalised responses, and keeps conversations flowing with a larger context window. To facilitate ease of payment, OpenAI has integrated UPI, which the company hopes will be a game-changer and will attract droves of users. How many Indian users would actually pay is not clear when there is a free version, with limits, available. Clearly, OpenAI is under pressure to show numbers, and India can offer those numbers.
Another strategy was to strike deals with governments. For instance, OpenAI has entered into a strategic partnership with the UK government for the adoption of AI in a multitude of areas, sectors, and fields. These include the government and private sector, and infrastructure development. In India, it has started in a small way through its OpenAI Academy, which has partnered with the government initiative IndiaAI Future Skills Mission to tap into AI education and AI literacy segments targeting students and developers.
Competition among AI companies is heating up as leading players Google (through Gemini), Perplexity, Microsoft (Copilot), and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta AI are slugging it out to gain the so-called early mover advantage, which is critical in the digital economy, where the winner sometimes takes it all, leaving little for others. Some deals are done - Meta AI with the Reliance group, Microsoft with RailTel, Apollo Hospitals, Bajaj Finserv, Mahindra Group, and upGrad, Perplexity with Bharti Airtel, etc.
There are, however, a few major concerns relating to the aggressive initiatives of foreign AI companies in India. Firstly, will their entry in India help Indian AI companies to grow? Secondly, what will be the impact of global AI companies on India’s efforts to build its own homegrown sovereign AI? DT Next has written an edit on Sarvam AI (https://www.dtnext.in/edit/homegrown-ai-platform-831737). There are other homegrown efforts to build multilingual, open-source models tailored to Indian contexts. The government and technology policy experts should study these issues carefully and evolve appropriate policies.
The widely held view is that global companies would help Indian AI companies, but there is a section of experts who think that Indian companies may face survival and growth challenges as global tech giants offer models which are packed with features and initially give them free or at a low price. Lastly, every global AI company is eyeing India’s vast data repository, which the country has been harvesting over the years of extensive digitisation, and through various voluntary and mandatory rules and regulations. India cannot afford to be hasty in a fast-changing sector and needs to tread with extreme caution, especially about giving access to previous and sensitive data.
