Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
The AI search startup's free promotion expired, downloads dropped, and revenue went up, which is exactly how a good freemium strategy is supposed to work.
Perplexity just proved something counterintuitive in one of the world’s most price-sensitive tech markets. After its free promotional deal with Bharti Airtel expired on January 16, 2026, the AI search company saw its India revenue climb roughly 60% among new users, even as app downloads declined.
The Airtel deal, by the numbers #
Perplexity and Bharti Airtel announced their partnership on July 17, 2025. The terms were generous to the point of seeming reckless: all 360 million Airtel subscribers across mobile, broadband, and DTH services received a complimentary 12-month Perplexity Pro subscription, valued at roughly ₹17,000 (about $200) per user.
India downloads surged 600% year-on-year, reaching 2.8 million by Q2 2025. Perplexity Pro subscribers get access to advanced models including GPT-4.1 and Claude, plus deep research capabilities, image generation, file analysis, and higher search limits.
India’s AI monetization paradox #
India is a fascinating and frustrating market for subscription-based tech companies. It has the world’s largest population, rapidly growing smartphone penetration, and a massive appetite for AI tools. It also has among the lowest willingness to pay for software on the planet. This is the same market where Spotify had to slash its premium price to ₹119 per month (roughly $1.40) to compete, where YouTube Premium offers family plans at a fraction of US pricing, and where most SaaS companies report India as their highest-traffic, lowest-revenue region. Perplexity’s $200-per-year Pro subscription is not a casual purchase for the median Indian internet user. The users who stayed and opened their wallets represent a self-selected cohort of power users willing to pay premium pricing in a market that typically resists it. If even 2-3% of the millions who tried Pro during the Airtel window became paying subscribers, that’s tens of thousands of annual subscriptions at roughly $200 each, a revenue base that didn’t exist before July 2025.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our