Perplexity’s India Growth Story Continues After the Airtel Free-Access Boom

Perplexity’s experiment in India is beginning to reveal what happens when millions of people receive temporary access to a premium artificial intelligence service. The company’s partnership with Airtel gave eligible customers a free one-year subscription to Perplexity Pro, creating a dramatic jump in downloads and monthly usage. More importantly, a substantial portion of those users continued using the service after the initial promotional period started winding down.

The partnership launched in July 2025 and offered Airtel customers access to Perplexity Pro for 12 months. The promotion was designed to introduce a large number of Indian users to the platform and give the AI search service a much wider presence in one of the world’s largest internet markets. New users could claim the offer until January 2026, while people who had already activated the subscription retained their access for a full year from activation.

The impact was almost immediate. Perplexity’s monthly active users in India rose sharply around the launch of the Airtel promotion. According to the data provided in the source material, monthly active users reached around 9 million in July 2025 before climbing rapidly over the following months. The figure reached approximately 18.3 million in September and peaked at about 22.1 million in October.

That growth was significant because it showed that the promotion did more than generate short-term downloads. Millions of people were not only installing the application but also continuing to use it after discovering the service through the telecom partnership.

Once the offer stopped accepting new redemptions in January 2026, the growth pattern changed. Downloads declined substantially, but the active-user base remained considerably larger than it had been before the Airtel partnership. Monthly active users were around 19 million in January and remained at approximately 18 million in March before gradually declining during the following months.

By July 2026, Perplexity still had around 13.9 million monthly active users in India. While that was below the October 2025 peak, it represented a much larger audience than the platform had before the Airtel deal. The figures suggest that a considerable number of users continued to find value in the service even after the promotional acquisition period ended.

The difference between downloads and active users is particularly important. New downloads dropped sharply after the redemption window closed, but existing users did not disappear at the same rate. This indicates that the promotion may have helped Perplexity establish a lasting user base rather than simply creating a temporary spike in app installations.

The bigger question now is monetisation. India is a huge market for digital services, but consumers are often highly price-sensitive. AI companies can attract millions of users through free access, discounted subscriptions and telecom partnerships, but converting that audience into paying customers is a much harder challenge.

Early revenue signals provide some encouragement. The source data indicates that Perplexity’s Indian in-app purchase and subscription revenue increased even after downloads began falling. This suggests that some users may have become comfortable enough with the premium service to consider paying for continued access.

However, the available data does not prove that former Airtel subscribers are directly responsible for the increase. Because free subscriptions were set to renew automatically unless users cancelled them, some payments could have come from customers who simply failed to turn off renewal. Other paying customers may also have discovered Perplexity independently because of the publicity generated by the Airtel partnership.

This distinction will become increasingly important as more users reach the end of their individual free subscription periods. The coming months could provide a clearer picture of how many people are willing to pay once premium access is no longer free.

Perplexity’s experience also highlights why India has become such an important testing ground for AI companies. The country offers an enormous mobile and internet audience, rapidly increasing interest in generative AI and a highly competitive digital market. For AI companies, the challenge is to turn massive user numbers into regular usage, long-term loyalty and eventually sustainable revenue.

The Airtel partnership appears to have achieved the first part of that goal. It brought Perplexity to millions of new users and dramatically increased awareness of the service. The next challenge is proving that those users can become a durable customer base.

For the wider AI industry, the experiment could offer an important lesson. Free access can be extremely effective at accelerating adoption, particularly in a large market such as India. But the real measure of success may come later, when users have to decide whether the AI service has become valuable enough to pay for. Perplexity’s user numbers suggest the promotion created lasting interest, while its emerging revenue trends could provide clues about whether that interest can ultimately become a sustainable business.