Perplexity user base jumps after free Airtel bundle in India

Perplexity’s decision to bundle a free year of its paid AI tier with a major Indian telecom produced a surge that looked less like organic adoption than a price experiment at national scale. According to TechCrunch, Perplexity partnered with Airtel in July 2025 to offer a free 12‑month Perplexity Pro subscription—normally priced at roughly $200—to Airtel’s customer base of about 360 million people. New redemptions ended in mid-January 2026, but the promotion left a measurable footprint in downloads, active users, and revenue.

Sensor Tower data cited by TechCrunch shows Perplexity recorded 5.9 million app downloads in India in July 2025, up 625% from June, and more than the total 5.4 million downloads the app had logged in India during the entire first half of 2025. Over the seven months the offer was available, Perplexity recorded 56 million downloads in India—more than nine times the downloads in the preceding seven months. Monthly active users in India more than doubled to 8.9 million in July 2025 and peaked at 22 million in October 2025.

When the free window closed, the funnel tightened immediately. TechCrunch reports that Perplexity’s downloads in India fell sharply, with 3.3 million downloads between February and July 2026—down more than 90% compared with the preceding six months. Monthly active users declined as well, from about 22 million at the peak to nearly 14 million in July 2026. Yet that “post-promotion” level still sits far above the pre-deal baseline, and Sensor Tower’s Abe Yousef told TechCrunch that ongoing usage remained resilient despite the offer ending.

The more awkward detail for the broader AI market is what happened to revenue. TechCrunch reports that Perplexity’s in-app purchase and subscription revenue in India between February and mid-August 2026 rose about 60% compared with the period when the Airtel offer was available, even as the earliest Airtel subscribers began reaching the end of their free access in mid-2026 and had to actively opt out of auto-renewal to avoid charges. The pattern suggests a model in which a telecom partner supplies distribution and billing leverage, while the AI company uses the free year to train habits and convert a fraction of users once they are already embedded.

India’s scale makes these swings meaningful: TechCrunch notes the country has more than a billion internet subscribers and is the world’s second-largest smartphone market. The same logic is now visible across the sector, with other AI companies rolling out India-specific lower-cost plans and partnerships. In a market where the marginal cost of serving one more user is real but hidden behind cloud invoices, the fastest growth comes from whoever can make the first year feel free.

Perplexity’s India spike began with a telecom bundle, and it has remained large enough that the comedown still looks like a win.