OpenAI taps Uber India's Prabhjeet Singh to run its India market
OpenAI has named Uber's outgoing India president as its first managing director for the country, signalling that its second-largest market is now a core priority.
The News
OpenAI has hired Prabhjeet Singh, the outgoing president of Uber India and South Asia, as its first managing director for India. The appointment, confirmed on Friday, hands one of Silicon Valley's most closely watched companies a seasoned local operator to run what it now calls its second-largest market after the United States.
Singh will join OpenAI in September 2026 and report to Kiran Mani, the company's managing director for Asia Pacific. His brief is broad: scaling commercial partnerships, deepening enterprise adoption, and building out an Indian organisation that until recently barely existed on paper.
The hire is the clearest signal yet that OpenAI intends to treat India as a core market rather than a distant growth story. It opened a New Delhi office in August 2025 and has lined up further offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru. The company has also recruited well-connected local hands, including Pragya Misra, a former Truecaller and Meta executive, and Rishi Jaitly, the former head of Twitter India, who serves as a senior adviser.
Why It Matters
The numbers explain the urgency. India is already OpenAI's biggest market outside the US by users, and people aged 18 to 24 account for nearly half of all ChatGPT usage in the country. That is a young, mobile-first base rivals would dearly love to capture first.
Choosing a mobility veteran over a pure technologist is deliberate. Singh spent years scaling Uber across a price-sensitive, regulation-heavy market, exactly the conditions OpenAI now faces in India, where willingness to pay for software is low and distribution is everything.
The move echoes a familiar pattern. When Google, Amazon and Meta decided India was strategic rather than optional, they stopped parachuting in expatriate leaders and started hiring operators who understood the ground. The last time foreign technology firms localised leadership this aggressively, it was the cloud giants in the late 2010s, and that bet reshaped Indian enterprise computing.
Indian Angle
There is a competitive dimension too. Anthropic has been building its India presence under Irina Ghose, a former Microsoft India managing director, while Google DeepMind retains deep roots in the country. The contest for Indian mindshare is now a fight between the best-funded names in the business.
For Indian companies, a local managing director changes the calculus. Enterprise buyers at reported partners such as Reliance, Tata Group and Pine Labs now have a senior counterpart who can be held accountable locally rather than a queue routed through San Francisco. That matters for procurement, for data-residency talks, and for the bespoke deployments large conglomerates expect.
It also raises the stakes for home-grown model builders. Sarvam and Krutrim have positioned themselves as sovereign alternatives, betting Indian enterprises and the government will prefer locally built systems. A well-staffed OpenAI India operation, backed by a Tata data-centre partnership starting at 100MW, narrows the localisation gap those startups have leaned on. With MeitY drafting AI governance rules and the RBI cautious about data flows in payments, an accountable local executive could smooth OpenAI's path through Delhi's policy corridors, the same corridors that have tripped up foreign platforms before.
FAQ
When does Prabhjeet Singh start at OpenAI?
Singh announced his resignation from Uber on Friday and is expected to join OpenAI in September 2026 as its first India managing director. He will report to Kiran Mani, OpenAI's managing director for Asia Pacific.
Why is India so important to OpenAI?
India is OpenAI's second-largest market after the United States by users. The base is also strikingly young, with 18 to 24 year-olds making up nearly half of all ChatGPT usage in the country, a demographic that shapes long-term platform loyalty.
How does this affect Indian AI startups?
A serious local OpenAI operation, paired with a Tata data-centre partnership starting at 100MW, pressures sovereign-model builders such as Sarvam and Krutrim. Their core pitch has been localisation and data residency, advantages that narrow once a global rival staffs up on the ground.
Where can I read the original report?
The appointment was first reported by TechCrunch, whose coverage details OpenAI's office expansion, partnerships and India hiring plans.
This story was reported by TechCrunch. Read the full original coverage at TechCrunch.