Perplexity’s partnership with Airtel offering a free 12-month premium AI subscription dramatically increased app downloads and active users in India, setting a new benchmark for AI growth strategies in the region. Despite a steep drop in new downloads after the offer ended, overall engagement and spending have held strong, indicating potential for sustainable adoption.
- Free premium AI subscription via Airtel attracted 56M downloads over 7 months.
- Downloads fell 90% after offer ended, but active users stayed 5x higher than pre-promotion.
- India revenue grew 60% post-promotion despite fewer new downloads.
Market signal
India’s massive and growing smartphone user base continues to be an attractive market for AI service providers exploring large-scale user acquisition through promotions and partnerships. Perplexity’s experiment with Airtel, offering a free 12-month premium subscription to 360 million customers, drove extraordinary download growth—56 million in seven months—and a peak of 22 million monthly active users. This underscores India’s viability as a growth engine for consumer AI despite challenges in monetization.
However, once the free offer window closed, new downloads plunged over 90%, affirming that such promotions primarily attract acquisition rather than organic growth. The sustained engagement and unusually strong revenue growth post-promotion provide an early, significant datapoint supporting the idea that free trials bundled with telecom operators can effectively convert users into paying customers in emerging markets, a strategy mirrored by other global AI providers.
Operator impact
Airtel’s collaboration with Perplexity highlights how telecom operators can leverage AI services as value-added propositions to deepen customer engagement. By embedding a premium AI tool within its ecosystem, Airtel not only enhanced its service portfolio but also helped users access advanced technology at no immediate cost, creating stickiness and potential upsell opportunities.
The scale of the offer to over 300 million users amplifies perceptions of telecom carriers moving beyond connectivity to become platforms for delivering AI-powered digital services. This partnership’s success may encourage operators in similarly competitive markets to consider AI bundling deals as a differentiator and driver of customer retention beyond traditional voice or data services.
What to watch next
The key question is whether Perplexity and similar AI providers can replicate and extend the curated conversion of free users to paying customers over time, especially as telecom-subsidized offers phase out. The initial 60% revenue bump signals potential, but sustained revenue growth will depend on pricing, feature differentiation, and user experience improvements.
Operators and AI firms will also be watching regulatory and competitive dynamics, including data privacy policies and emerging local AI alternatives. Monitoring the evolution of post-trial user retention and paying subscriber expansion in India will be critical for assessing the long-term viability of telecom-AI bundling in other major developing markets.