OpenAI appears to have found a strong product-market fit with young people in India. The company reported on Friday that nearly half of all messages sent to ChatGPT in the country come from users between 18 and 24 years old. When expanded to include everyone under 30, that age group accounts for a striking 80% of messages.
Indians primarily use ChatGPT for work-related purposes. Thirty-five percent of all messages from the country are for professional tasks, which is higher than the global average of 30%. The coding assistant, Codex, is particularly popular. OpenAI states that Indians use Codex three times more than the global median, and weekly usage has quadrupled since the tool’s Mac app launched two weeks ago. Users in India also ask three times as many coding questions as the median user globally.
These findings align with a recent report from Anthropic, which noted that 45.2% of tasks performed on its Claude AI in India are software-related.
Outside of work, Indian users engage with ChatGPT for a variety of needs. Thirty-five percent of messages request guidance, 20% ask for general information, and another 20% involve writing assistance or content creation.
India is now OpenAI’s second-largest market, boasting over 100 million weekly users. The company has actively pursued growth there by offering a subscription tier priced under five dollars and running promotional campaigns to boost adoption.
OpenAI’s chief economist, Ronnie Chatterji, commented on the data, stating, “AI adoption is moving faster than our ability to measure it – and that’s a challenge for anyone trying to make smart decisions. Signals is our way of putting real-world evidence on the table, so India’s AI debate can be grounded in facts, not hype.”
The company has been particularly active in India recently, coinciding with a major AI summit in New Delhi. OpenAI is expanding its physical presence with new offices opening this year in Mumbai and Bengaluru. It has also secured a significant partnership with the Tata Group to obtain 100 megawatts of AI computing capacity and to distribute ChatGPT Enterprise within Tata’s IT services arm, TCS.
Further expanding its reach, OpenAI has signed agreements with fintech firm Pine Labs, travel platforms Ixigo and MakeMyTrip, and food delivery company Eternal. Additionally, the company has partnered with educational institutions to provide its AI tools to more than 100,000 students over the next six years.