OpenAI took a bold step in its India expansion by naming Prabhjeet Singh as the company’s first managing director for the country. Singh, who stepped down from his role as president of Uber India and South Asia last Friday, will start at OpenAI in September. He will report directly to Kiran Mani, the firm’s managing director for the Asia Pacific region.
Singh’s mandate covers a wide swath of OpenAI’s Indian operations. He will oversee consumer growth, drive enterprise adoption, negotiate partnerships, engage with regulators and manage day‑to‑day activities. The appointment underscores OpenAI’s view of India as its second‑largest market after the United States, a market the company believes is crucial for the next wave of generative‑AI adoption.
OpenAI’s India push began last August with the opening of its first office in New Delhi. Earlier this year the firm announced plans to add offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru, signaling a commitment to a broader geographic presence. The hiring of Singh follows a series of strategic hires in the region, including Pragya Misra, a former Truecaller and Meta executive who joined in 2024 to lead public policy and partnerships before expanding her role to head of strategy and global affairs. Rishi Jaitly, the former head of Twitter India, also came on board as a senior adviser to help shape OpenAI’s engagement with the Indian government on AI policy.
In recent months OpenAI has been busy building a network of Indian partners. The company struck deals with higher‑education institutions, enterprise‑payment providers, AI‑powered commerce platforms and web‑streaming services. Two of India’s biggest conglomerates, Reliance and the Tata Group, are among the early collaborators, giving OpenAI a foothold in sectors ranging from finance to media. The firm is also taking part in India’s burgeoning data‑center build‑out, a critical component for delivering low‑latency AI services to a user base that now exceeds a billion internet users.
Hiring activity reflects the firm’s growth ambitions. OpenAI currently lists openings for AI deployment engineers, developer‑experience engineers, a developer‑marketing lead, a partner director and solutions engineers. The talent push aims to tap India’s vast pool of developers and engineers, a key reason the country has become a battleground for U.S. AI firms.
OpenAI’s intensified focus on India comes amid rising competition. Anthropic, another U.S. AI startup, opened an office in Bengaluru in late 2025 and appointed former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose as its head of India. The rivalry highlights how quickly the Indian market is attracting global AI players, each vying for talent, partnerships and regulatory goodwill.
By installing Singh at the helm, OpenAI hopes to translate its partnership pipeline into measurable growth. The company’s leadership emphasized that Singh’s experience scaling a consumer‑focused tech giant in the region will be instrumental in navigating the complex Indian market dynamics. As OpenAI expands its product suite and deepens its local engagements, the coming months will reveal whether the strategic hires and partnership deals can cement its position as a leading AI provider in the subcontinent.
This article was written with the assistance of AI.
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