Google, Perplexity woo India with free AI Pro plans

Two major artificial intelligence companies have launched aggressive campaigns to capture India’s booming AI market, offering premium subscriptions worth nearly ₹20,000 annually to millions of potential users for free

- Vishal Mathur

Google has announced a yearlong free AI Pro subscription for Indian university students, while Perplexity has partnered with telecom giant Bharti Airtel to provide its Pro plan, also for a year, at no cost to the company's 360 million customers across mobile, broadband and direct-to-home services.

The competing offers, announced within days of each other, represent a high-stakes gamble to establish market dominance in what Boston Consulting Group projects will be a $17 billion Indian AI economy by 2027—triple its current value and amongst the fastest-growing globally.