OpenAI just made one of its boldest moves yet outside the United States. According to TechCrunch AI, the company has hired Prabhjeet Singh, the former president of Uber India and South Asia, as its first managing director for India. Singh announced his resignation from Uber on Friday and starts at OpenAI in September.
This is a clear signal. OpenAI calls India its second-largest market after the U.S., and it just put a heavyweight operator in charge of it.
What the role covers
Singh will report to Kiran Mani, OpenAI’s managing director for Asia Pacific, TechCrunch AI reports. His mandate is broad. He owns OpenAI’s performance across the country, which means he’s responsible for:
- Consumer growth (think ChatGPT adoption)
- Enterprise adoption among Indian businesses
- Partnerships with local companies
- Regulatory engagement with the government
- Day-to-day operations
That’s not a figurehead job. It’s an end-to-end country lead, and OpenAI handed it to someone who scaled a complex, regulation-heavy business across South Asia.
Why this matters
What stands out here is the pattern. This hire isn’t a one-off. OpenAI opened its first India office in New Delhi last August, and earlier this year it said it would add offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru. It brought on former Truecaller and Meta executive Pragya Misra to run public policy and partnerships, then expanded her role. It also tapped former Twitter India head Rishi Jaitly as a senior adviser to help build ties with the Indian government on AI policy.
Layer on the partnerships. Over the past few months, OpenAI struck deals spanning higher education, enterprise payments, AI-powered commerce, and web streaming, according to TechCrunch AI. It’s also part of India’s growing data center build-out. Indian conglomerates Reliance and Tata Group are among its early partners.
Add the hiring spree. OpenAI is recruiting AI deployment engineers, developer experience engineers, a developer marketing lead, a partner director, and solutions engineers. Put it all together and you get a company building real infrastructure in a market, not just planting a flag.
The bigger fight
India has become one of the key battlegrounds for U.S. AI companies. The reasons are simple: a vast developer base, more than a billion internet users, and surging demand for generative AI. OpenAI points to India’s fast-growing ChatGPT adoption as proof the market is worth the investment.
And OpenAI isn’t alone. Rival Anthropic opened its India office in Bengaluru in late 2025 and named former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose as its India head. Notice the playbook on both sides: hire a respected local executive with deep operating experience, then build out offices, partnerships, and engineering teams around them. The land grab is on.
What to watch next
A few things worth tracking once Singh starts in September:
- Enterprise deals. A consumer hit like ChatGPT is one thing. Converting Indian enterprises into paying customers is where the real revenue lives, and that’s squarely in Singh’s lane.
- Regulatory positioning. India is still shaping its AI rules. Having an MD focused on regulatory engagement, plus advisers like Jaitly, tells you OpenAI wants a seat at that table early.
- Pricing and localization. India is price-sensitive. Whether OpenAI tailors products and pricing for the market will say a lot about how serious this bet really is.
- The Anthropic race. Two of the most important AI labs are now staffing up in the same city, chasing the same developers. Expect that competition to heat up fast.
The takeaway is straightforward. Hiring a country MD of Singh’s caliber is what companies do when they stop experimenting and start scaling. OpenAI is treating India like a market it intends to win, not just enter.
You can find the full details in the original report from TechCrunch AI.