Indians are getting a cheaper ChatGPT subscription plan
OpenAI is betting it can turn India’s huge ChatGPT audience into paying subscribers.
It’s no secret that OpenAI has one of the largest user bases in the world; more than 700 million people use ChatGPT every week. But the thing is, most of their users aren't paying. That’s the challenge every internet giant eventually faces: how do you turn massive usage into actual revenue, especially in markets where people are used to free apps and services?
This week, OpenAI is testing an answer in India, its second-biggest market. The company has introduced ChatGPT Go, a subscription tier priced at just ₹399 a month (around $4.60). That’s nearly one-fifth the cost of the existing Plus plan in the country, which was set at ₹1,999 ($23). Along with the lower price, OpenAI has added support for UPI payments, which is how most Indians already pay for online services.
Millions are using ChatGPT in India, yet the money side tells a different story. Despite more than 29 million downloads in the past 90 days, the app only brought in about $3.6 million, according to AppFigures. That gap between usage and revenue is exactly what OpenAI is hoping to close.
Oluwaseun Bamisile
ChatGPT Go provides users with a notable upgrade over the free version, offering more messages, enhanced image generation, larger file uploads, and improved memory, which makes conversations feel more consistent. The pitch is simply to make ChatGPT more useful for everyday work, whether that’s students drafting essays, freelancers polishing presentations, or small businesses testing code.
It’s also interesting to see how OpenAI is positioning itself compared to rivals. Other AI players have been experimenting with how to attract India’s vast online population of over 850 million people. Google recently handed out free AI Pro plans to students, while Perplexity teamed up with Airtel to give away premium access. In fact, it seems that as of now, OpenAI's strategy may simply be to hope that a fair price alone might be enough to convert India’s enormous user base into paying customers.
This is certainly not limited to India. Other regions like Brazil, Africa, and Southeast Asia are facing similar questions about affordability. If “Go” works in India, it’s not hard to imagine OpenAI cloning the model elsewhere.
For now, though, it’s a test run. Whether people see enough value in the Go tier to justify paying, in a country where most digital services are free, will show how far OpenAI can stretch beyond Silicon Valley and into markets where scale matters more than high margins.
Kelechi Edeh
