Anthropic has appointed former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose to head its India operations as the US AI startup prepares to open an office in Bengaluru. The move highlights how India is becoming a key battleground for AI companies looking to expand beyond the US and into key growth markets.
Ghose brings deep operational experience in big technology to this role. She worked for Microsoft for 24 years before retiring in December 2025. Her appointment gives Anthropic an experienced executive with relationships with local businesses and governments as it prepares to establish a presence on the ground in one of the world’s fastest-growing AI markets.
India has become one of Anthropic’s most strategically important markets, with the country already ranking as Claude’s second-largest user base, with usage heavily skewed toward technical and work-related tasks, including software development. Its biggest rival, OpenAI, is also increasing its focus on the market with plans to open an office in New Delhi. This shows that India is fast becoming one of the most competitive sectors in the global race to commercialize generative AI.
India has huge size with over 1 billion internet subscribers and over 700 million smartphone users, but converting that reach into meaningful revenue has proven difficult, forcing AI companies to experiment with aggressive pricing and promotions. OpenAI last year introduced ChatGPT Go, a sub-$5 plan aimed at attracting Indian users, and then made it available for free in the country for a year.
We’re seeing a similar movement at Anthropic. The company’s Claude app saw a 48% year-on-year increase in downloads in India in September, reaching around 767,000 installs. Meanwhile, monthly consumer spending jumped 572% to $195,000, according to Appfigures, but remains modest compared to the US, where spending reached $2.5 million in September.
Anthropic is increasing its involvement in India at the highest level. CEO Dario Amodei visited in October to meet with business executives and lawmakers, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to discuss the company’s expansion plans and greater adoption of its tools. As TechCrunch previously reported, Anthropic was also exploring a potential partnership with billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries to expand its access to Claude. However, Reliance eventually signed a deal with Google to offer the Gemini AI Pro plan for free to Jio subscribers. The move comes as rival Bharti Airtel partners with Perplexity to bundle access to premium subscriptions, highlighting how the Indian telecom giant has become a key distribution gatekeeper in the race to expand consumer AI services.
In a LinkedIn post announcing the move, Ghose said she would focus on working with Indian enterprises, developers, and startups that adopt Claude for “mission-critical” use cases, noting the growing demand for what she called “trustworthy, enterprise-grade AI.” She added that AI tailored to local languages could be a “power multiplier” across sectors including education and healthcare, indicating Anthropic’s intention to move beyond early technology users and deepen adoption into larger institutions and the public sector.
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The push by Anthropic, OpenAI, and Perplexity comes at a time when India’s domestic GenAI ecosystem is still relatively nascent. While the country has a wealth of software talent and a rapidly growing AI user base, there are few startups building large-scale infrastructure models, and investors are primarily backing application-layer companies rather than committing the scale of capital typically required to train frontier systems.
The appointment also comes ahead of the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in February, where the Indian government will bring together AI startups, global CEOs and industry experts to discuss the next phase of AI adoption in the country. The summit is part of New Delhi’s broader efforts to signal support for domestic AI development and position India as a key player in the global AI landscape amid increasing competition among major markets.
Anthropic is also expanding its India team and posting job postings for roles such as startup and enterprise account executives and partner sales managers, demonstrating its commitment to deepening its go-to-market efforts and reaching out to Indian companies and startups as customers as it expands its presence in India.
For Anthropic, the hire adds a senior local leader as it aims to turn India’s burgeoning usage into a lasting business and navigate a market where distribution partnerships, pricing pressures and corporate adoption determine which AI players will be the long-term winners.
