OpenAI appoints the chief of Uber India as its inaugural managing director for the region.

      TL;DR: OpenAI appointed Prabhjeet Singh, the former president of Uber India, as its first managing director for India, starting in September.

      OpenAI has selected Prabhjeet Singh, who recently served as president of Uber India and South Asia, to be its inaugural managing director for India. He will commence his role in September and report to Kiran Mani, OpenAI's managing director for the Asia Pacific region, as stated to TechCrunch. Singh will be responsible for consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regulatory interactions, and operations in what OpenAI refers to as its second-largest market, following the United States.

      Singh has nearly 11 years of experience at Uber, where he began as head of strategy in August 2015 and progressed to president in June 2020. Prior to his time at Uber, he worked as an associate partner at McKinsey, advising clients in financial services, telecommunications, and consumer technology. He holds degrees from IIT Kharagpur and IIM Ahmedabad.

      This appointment is part of OpenAI's ongoing investments in India over the past year. The company opened its first office in New Delhi last August and announced plans for additional offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru earlier this year. In 2024, it brought on Pragya Misra, a former executive at Truecaller and Meta, to lead public policy and partnerships, later expanding her role to head of strategy and global affairs.

      OpenAI has also recruited Rishi Jaitly, the former head of Twitter India, as a senior adviser to guide its interactions with the Indian government on AI policy. Kiran Mani, who previously worked as CEO of JioStar and spent 13 years at Google, was appointed to lead the Asia Pacific division in March.

      India's significance to OpenAI is underscored by impressive statistics. CEO Sam Altman mentioned in February that there are 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users in the country, with users aged 18 to 24 making up nearly half of all messages sent from India. The company has also formed partnerships in areas such as higher education, enterprise payments with Pine Labs, web streaming with Reliance's JioHotStar, and data center capacity with Tata Group.

      This announcement comes at a time when India’s AI sector is becoming increasingly competitive. Rival Anthropic opened its office in Bengaluru at the end of 2025 and, in January, appointed former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose to lead its operations in the country. Companies like Google, Amazon, and domestic startups such as Sarvam, which recently attained unicorn status with a $234 million funding round, are all vying for developers and enterprise customers in a market boasting over a billion internet users.

      The competitive landscape also presents geopolitical challenges. A recent order by the US government to suspend Anthropic's most advanced models for non-US users sparked a debate on sovereignty in India, leading to proposals for a $5 billion annual fund to enhance domestic AI capabilities. For OpenAI, placing a seasoned local executive in charge demonstrates its seriousness about avoiding the perception of being a foreign dependency.

      Singh faces a dual mandate that intertwines political and commercial interests. India's government has recognized AI as a national priority, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosting the leaders of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google at the AI Impact Summit in February. However, the Anthropic suspension highlighted how quickly access can be restricted, prompting Indian policymakers to reconsider their dependence on American service providers.

      OpenAI has concurrently increased its hiring in India, with positions available for AI deployment engineers, developer experience engineers, a developer marketing lead, a partner director, and solutions engineers. Uber has not yet named a successor for Singh but is anticipated to announce its leadership transition plans in the near future.