Indian visitors talk on their mobile phones outside the Google stall at the India Mobile Congress in New Delhi on Sept. 27, 2017.
Prakash Singh | AFP | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence companies racing to expand in India are not just chasing customers — they are enlisting millions of users to help train AI models for the world.
Google and Perplexity AI are offering their services free for 12 to 18 months through partnerships with local telecom providers Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, while OpenAI has made its ChatGPT Go plan free nationwide for one year.
“India stands at the intersection of youth, digital fluency and rapid AI adoption,” said Sharmila Senthilraja, VP and industry platform leader at Capgemini India.
Low internet costs and a strong digital foundation have enabled consumers aged 18 to 35 to experiment freely with emerging technologies, Senthilraja said. Half of India’s internet users report using some form of AI, she added.
India has one of the highest smartphone and internet penetration rates in the world. “With over 700 million internet users and widespread smartphone penetration, India generates massive volumes of data, which is the fuel for training AI models,” a Boston Consulting Group report said in June.
The country’s AI market is projected to exceed $17 billion by 2027, making it one of the fastest-growing in the world, BCG added.
AI players are not just building a “simple user base; it is a new data and cognition infrastructure, powered by human engagement and trained at a national scale,” Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief executive officer of US-based Greyhound Research.
He added that AI platforms offered through telecom providers will also shape enterprise behavior. “The tools that your employees experiment with at home today become the same ones they use at work tomorrow,” he said.
India’s AI workforce is expected to grow from about 650,000 professionals to more than 1.27 million by 2027, at a compound annual growth rate of 15%, according to 2024 estimates shared by India’s IT and tech industry body NASSCOM.
AI is driving demand for jobs in data science, data curation, AI engineering, and analytics in India. As of August 2025, around 865,000 candidates have enrolled or trained in various emerging technology courses, including 320,000 in AI and Big Data Analytics.
“India is becoming the bot training capital of the world,” Saurabh Mukherjea, founder and chief investment officer of Marcellus Investment Managers, told CNBC. He added that the country is also set to become a major global center for data cleaning.