OpenAI is making an even bigger and more visible bet on India. The company has appointed Prabhjeet Singh, former president of Uber India South Asia, as its first managing director in the country to expand its presence in the country, which is said to be its second largest market after the US.
Singh, who announced his resignation from Uber on Friday, will join OpenAI in September and report to Kiran Mani, the company’s managing director for Asia Pacific, the company told TechCrunch. He will be responsible for OpenAI’s performance across consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regulatory initiatives and operations in India, the company said.
This hire marks OpenAI’s latest investment in India. The company opened its first office in New Delhi in August last year and announced new offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru earlier this year. In 2024, the company hired former Truecaller and Meta executive Pragya Misra as head of public policy and partnerships, and last year expanded her role to head of strategy and international affairs. OpenAI previously brought on former Twitter India head Rishi Jaitley as a senior advisor to establish engagement with the Indian government on AI policy.
Over the past few months, OpenAI has entered into partnerships across the country spanning higher education, enterprise payments, AI-powered commerce, and web streaming, as well as becoming part of the country’s growing data center construction efforts. OpenAI pointed to the rapidly growing adoption of ChatGPT in India as a sign of the importance of the market. Indian conglomerates Reliance and Tata Group are also among the early partners in the market.
The company is also ramping up its hiring efforts in India, recruiting for AI implementation engineers, developer experience engineers, developer marketing leads, partner directors, solution engineers, and more.
India has emerged as one of the key battlegrounds for US AI companies due to its vast developer base, over 1 billion internet users, and burgeoning demand for generative AI. Rival Anthropic will open an India office in Bangalore in late 2025 and appointed former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose as head of India earlier this year.
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