OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity are locked in a fierce battle to capture artificial intelligence users in India. They have rolled out free services in a bid to amass a wealth of multilingual training data from the Indian market. Early download figures suggest that the free strategy has paid off handsomely, with a notable uptick in user engagement among Indian users. As of last week, ChatGPT witnessed a staggering 607% year-on-year surge in its daily active users in India, reaching a staggering 73 million, which is more than twice the number in the United States. Gemini, too, has seen its daily active users in India grow by 15% since launching its campaign in November, hitting 17 million last week, in stark contrast to just 3 million in the United States. At present, Indian users constitute over one-third of Perplexity's global daily active users, a significant jump from a mere 7% last year. Prior to this, Perplexity also extended a one-year free Pro tool service to Airtel users in India.