OpenAI is reinforcing its strategic commitment to India, designating Prabhjeet Singh, previously Uber's President for India and South Asia, as its inaugural Managing Director for the nation. This significant appointment aims to substantially expand its footprint in what the company identifies as its second-largest market globally, following the U.S.
Singh, whose departure from Uber was announced on Friday, is slated to commence his role at OpenAI in September, reporting directly to Kiran Mani, the company's Managing Director for Asia-Pacific, as confirmed to TechCrunch. His comprehensive mandate will encompass overseeing OpenAI's performance across India, covering critical areas such as consumer expansion, enterprise integration, strategic alliances, regulatory engagement, and operational efficiency.
This appointment underscores OpenAI's ongoing strategic investments within India. The company inaugurated its initial office in New Delhi last August and has since announced plans to establish additional presences in Mumbai and Bengaluru this year. Further demonstrating its commitment, OpenAI recruited Pragya Misra, formerly an executive at Truecaller and Meta, in 2024 to spearhead public policy and partnerships, a role that expanded last year to Head of Strategy and Global Affairs. Earlier, Rishi Jaitly, previously Twitter India's head, was engaged as a senior adviser to facilitate the company's dialogue with the Indian government on AI policy.
In recent months, OpenAI has forged significant partnerships across India, encompassing diverse sectors such as higher education, enterprise payment solutions, AI-driven commerce, and web streaming, concurrently participating in the nation's expanding data center infrastructure development. The company highlights India's swift adoption of ChatGPT as a key indicator of the market's strategic significance. Notably, prominent Indian conglomerates like Reliance and Tata Group are among its foundational partners in the region.
Concurrently, OpenAI has intensified its recruitment efforts within India, advertising a range of positions including AI deployment engineers, developer experience engineers, a developer marketing lead, a partner director, and solutions engineers.
India has rapidly become a pivotal arena for U.S. artificial intelligence firms, propelled by its extensive developer community, over a billion internet users, and a burgeoning appetite for generative AI technologies. This competitive landscape is further highlighted by rival Anthropic, which established its India office in Bengaluru in late 2025 and appointed Irina Ghose, previously Microsoft India's managing director, as its India head earlier this year.
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