Over the past year, Perplexity has conducted one of the most extensive AI growth experiments, providing its premium service free of charge to customers of the Indian telecom giant, Airtel. As the initial wave of these complimentary subscriptions begins to expire, the outcomes are now emerging, presenting an early indicator of whether bundling paid AI services can cultivate a sustainable user base and revenue stream once the free period concludes.
In July 2025, Perplexity forged a partnership with Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom operator, to offer a free 12-month Perplexity Pro subscription, typically valued at approximately $200, to Airtel’s 360 million customers. While new redemptions for this offer ceased on January 16, subscribers retained Pro access for a full year from activation. Consequently, the earliest users began reaching the end of their complimentary period last month, necessitating an opt-out of auto-renewal to avoid charges.
Perplexity's AI giveaway had an immediate and significant impact, with the company recording 5.9 million app downloads in India in July 2025. This figure, provided by Sensor Tower to TechCrunch, represented a staggering 625% increase from the preceding month and surpassed the 5.4 million downloads Perplexity had accumulated throughout the entire first half of the year.
This surge in momentum extended beyond the initial launch month of the Perplexity offer. Sensor Tower estimates that Perplexity amassed 56 million downloads during the seven months the promotion was active for new users, an increase of more than nine times compared to the preceding seven-month period. Monthly active users more than doubled to 8.9 million in July, ultimately peaking at 22 million in October.
India has consistently proven to be a vast market for global technology companies' downloads, attributed to its immense population, over a billion internet subscribers, and comparatively low mobile data costs. The nation stands as the world's second-largest smartphone market, boasting over 700 million users, and has similarly become a significant source of users for generative AI services. However, translating this considerable scale into substantial revenue has historically been a challenge.
For AI companies prepared to subsidize access in pursuit of scale, India's market dynamics have made it an appealing testing ground. Companies such as Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI have increasingly targeted Indian consumers with India-specific, lower-cost plans, free access, and strategic distribution partnerships, with the long-term goal of converting them into paying customers.
Nevertheless, once the window for claiming the free Airtel subscription closed in January, Perplexity’s download figures experienced a sharp decline. Sensor Tower estimates that Perplexity was downloaded 3.3 million times in India between February and July, representing a more than 90% drop from the preceding six months.
The user base Perplexity had acquired, however, did not diminish as rapidly. Monthly active users, which peaked at approximately 22 million in October, still stood at nearly 14 million in July. While this marks a 37% decrease from its peak, it remains more than five times the average of about 2.6 million monthly users Perplexity recorded in the first half of 2025, according to Sensor Tower.
“While the time-sensitive nature of this promotion would naturally lead to a decline in adoption after the offer period, ongoing usage has remained resilient,” Abe Yousef, a senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower, informed TechCrunch. He further noted that Perplexity now has “significantly more users” in India than it did in the six months prior to the promotion.
Even more remarkably, Perplexity’s decrease in downloads has not been mirrored by a decline in spending. Sensor Tower estimates that Perplexity’s in-app purchase and subscription revenue in India between February and mid-August saw an approximate 60% increase compared to the period when the Airtel offer was available to new users, despite the concurrent drop in downloads.
This positive trend has persisted even as the earliest Airtel subscribers began losing their free Perplexity Pro access. From around July 18 through August 12, Perplexity’s average daily in-app purchase revenue in India, as reported by Sensor Tower, was 9% higher than during the preceding 30 days and 27% above the average for the first half of 2026.
This increase offers an early indication that some users might be willing to pay for the premium service after becoming accustomed to it for free. However, it does not conclusively confirm that Airtel users are specifically converting into paying subscribers.
The free subscriptions were configured for auto-renewal, requiring users who did not wish to continue the service to cancel before their renewal date to avoid being charged. This mechanism suggests that some of the observed revenue increase could be attributed to users who failed to cancel in time, rather than those who actively chose to subscribe. Sensor Tower is unable to differentiate between these scenarios or to separate former Airtel subscribers from other paying customers.
Appfigures, another app intelligence firm, also concluded that the Airtel deal dramatically altered Perplexity’s trajectory in India. Data shared by Appfigures with TechCrunch indicates that the initial growth was specific to Perplexity, rather than simply reflecting a broader increase in demand for AI applications.
“I compared Perplexity’s downloads to ChatGPT and Claude to ensure it wasn’t more appetite for AI, and it wasn’t,” Ariel Michaeli, co-founder and CEO of Appfigures, told TechCrunch.
In the week preceding the launch of the Airtel offer, Perplexity averaged approximately 11,200 downloads per day in India, according to Appfigures. This figure surged twentyfold to nearly 223,000 daily downloads during the first week of the offer's launch and continued to climb, reaching an average of about 305,000 per day between mid-September and mid-October. In contrast, downloads for OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude remained broadly stable during this period.
Appfigures also observed signs that Perplexity emerged from the giveaway with an expanded business in India, even after the promotional download boom subsided. Perplexity’s monthly net mobile revenue in the country, as per Appfigures, grew from approximately $34,000 in January 2025 to $70,000 in December, and further to $156,000 in July 2026. The AI company generated an estimated $878,000 in India during the first seven months of 2026, marking a 16% increase from its revenue for the entirety of 2025.
Michaeli cautioned against attributing all of this growth solely to Airtel users converting into paying customers. The substantial visibility generated by the promotion, he noted, may also have attracted new paying users who were never part of the original giveaway.
Perplexity’s experiment has since become part of a much broader strategic gamble by AI companies in India. In August 2025, OpenAI made its lower-priced ChatGPT Go plan free for a year in the country. Google subsequently followed Perplexity’s lead with a deal to offer its AI Pro subscription free for 18 months to eligible Reliance Jio users.
This positions Perplexity as an early test case for the efficacy of this strategy, as its Airtel deal commenced months before similar initiatives by OpenAI and Google. Consequently, Perplexity users are among the first large cohorts in India to reach the critical juncture where free premium AI transitions into a product they may have to pay for.
India has already established itself as the world’s largest market for generative AI app downloads but continues to present challenges in monetization. AI companies have demonstrated a willingness to prioritize user acquisition over near-term revenue in this price-sensitive market, striving to eventually convert that scale and user habit into paying customers.
That said, the available data cannot yet definitively show how many of Perplexity’s newly acquired users will willingly pay once their complimentary year concludes. This crucial test will unfold over the coming months as subsequent cohorts of Airtel users reach their respective renewal dates.
Perplexity did not respond to a request for comment regarding these developments.
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