OpenAI appoints Uber's Prabhjeet Singh as India MD to accelerate growth in its second-largest market

OpenAI has appointed Uber's Prabhjeet Singh as Managing Director for India, marking a significant step in the artificial intelligence company's expansion plans in one of its fastest-growing and most strategic markets.

Singh will join OpenAI in September and report to Kiran Mani, Managing Director for Asia Pacific. As the company's most senior executive in India, he will oversee its performance across consumer growth, enterprise adoption, strategic partnerships, regulatory engagement and operations.

India emerges as a strategic growth market for OpenAI

“The appointment is part of OpenAI’s continued investment in India - one of our top priority markets,” the company told Fortune India. Now it's the second-largest market by users globally, while ranking among its top five global markets for Codex adoption, with active users of its AI coding agent growing 27-fold since January this year, reflecting rising enterprise and developer interest in AI-powered software development. CEO Sam Altman has also highlighted India's role in driving usage of ChatGPT's image-generation features, describing the country as one of the platform's most active markets.

According to the company, Singh's mandate will include strengthening partnerships across the ecosystem and supporting India's broader AI ambitions. He will also work to expand the adoption of OpenAI's products among consumers, enterprises, institutions and public-sector organisations.

Prabhjeet Singh to lead commercial and policy engagement

Before joining OpenAI, Singh served as President of Uber India and South Asia, where he led the ride-hailing company's mobility business across India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. During his tenure, Uber expanded its offerings across mobility segments and deepened its presence in the region.

Singh brings more than a decade of experience in building technology-led businesses in India and managing large-scale operations. His appointment comes at a time when global AI companies are increasing investments in the country, attracted by its large developer base, growing enterprise demand and supportive digital infrastructure.

An alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and IIM Ahmedabad, Singh is expected to play a central role in shaping OpenAI's India strategy as the company looks to broaden commercial adoption of artificial intelligence while working with partners across industry and government.

Rapid user growth underscores India focus

OpenAI's investment in India comes as the company continues to see rapid global adoption of its flagship products. According to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, the ChatGPT app crossed one billion monthly active users in May, becoming the fastest application to reach the milestone.

As per reports, Uber on Friday confirmed that Singh’s move and the company has yet to announce a successor.