OpenAI poaches Uber India chief to lead its biggest market outside the U.S.

OpenAI has appointed former Uber India and South Asia president Prabhjeet Singh as its first managing director for India, the company's second-largest market after the U.S. Singh will join in September and oversee growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regulatory engagement, and operations. The hire underscores OpenAI's deepening investment in India amid rising competition from rivals like Anthropic.

OpenAI is making yet another big, visible bet on India. It has appointed former Uber India and South Asia president Prabhjeet Singh as its first managing director for the country to scale its presence in what it has called its second-largest market after the U.S. Singh, who announced his resignation from Uber on Friday, will join OpenAI in September and report to Kiran Mani, the company’s managing director for Asia-Pacific, the company told TechCrunch. He will be responsible for OpenAI’s performance in India across consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regulatory engagement, and operations, the company said. The hire marks OpenAI’s latest investment in India. The company opened its first office in New Delhi https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/21/openai-announces-new-delhi-office-as-it-expands-footprint-in-india/ last August and earlier this year said it would establish new offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru https://openai.com/index/openai-for-india/ . In 2024, it hired former Truecaller and Meta executive Pragya Misra to lead public policy and partnerships before expanding her role to head of strategy and global affairs last year. OpenAI had earlier brought on former Twitter India head Rishi Jaitly https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/08/openai-india-rishi-jaitly-hiring/ as a senior adviser to help establish its engagement with the Indian government on AI policy. Over the past few months, OpenAI struck partnerships in the nation spanning higher education https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/18/openai-pushes-into-higher-education-as-india-seeks-to-scale-ai-skills/ , enterprise payments https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/18/openai-deepens-india-push-with-pine-labs-fintech-partnership/ , AI-powered commerce https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/09/india-pilots-ai-chatbot-led-e-commerce-with-chatgpt-gemini-claude-in-the-mix/ , and web streaming https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/19/openai-reliance-partner-to-add-ai-search-to-jiohotstar/ , while also becoming part https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/18/openai-taps-tata-for-100mw-ai-data-center-capacity-in-india-eyes-1gw/ of the country’s growing data center build-out https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/25/amazon-ups-india-bet-with-fresh-13b-ai-infrastructure-investment/ . OpenAI has pointed to India’s rapidly growing adoption of ChatGPT https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/20/openai-says-18-to-24-year-olds-account-for-nearly-50-of-chatgpt-usage-in-india/ as a sign of the market’s importance. Indian conglomerates Reliance and Tata Group are also among its early partners in the market. The company has simultaneously ramped up hiring in India, with openings https://openai.com/careers/search/?l=28e2c82d-aa3c-4f77-8084-ebf8888b22cf%2Cd2b1576e-0e1e-4611-b587-6f65f326be14 including AI deployment engineers, developer experience engineers, a developer marketing lead, a partner director, and solutions engineers. India has emerged as one of the key battlegrounds for U.S. AI companies, driven by its vast developer base, more than a billion internet users, and surging demand for generative AI. Rival Anthropic opened its India office in Bengaluru https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/07/anthropic-plans-to-open-india-office-eyes-tie-up-with-billionaire-ambani/ in late 2025 and earlier this year named former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/15/anthropic-taps-former-microsoft-india-md-to-lead-bengaluru-expansion/ as its India head.