OpenAI names Prabhjeet Singh to scale India push

OpenAI names – OpenAI has appointed Prabhjeet Singh—formerly Uber India and South Asia president—as its first managing director for India, a move the company frames as scaling its second-largest market after the U.S. Singh will join OpenAI in September and focus on consumer

Prabhjeet Singh’s last week at Uber ended on Friday. By September, he will be walking into OpenAI’s India playbook—this time as the company’s first managing director for the country, a role designed to turn momentum into scale.

OpenAI appointed Singh to lead its biggest visible bet outside the U.S., positioning India as its second-largest market. Singh will report to Kiran Mani, OpenAI’s managing director for Asia Pacific. The company says his mandate is broad: OpenAI’s performance in India across consumer growth. enterprise adoption. partnerships. regulatory engagement. and operations.

It’s also a move that fits a pattern OpenAI has been building in India for more than a year. The company opened its first office in New Delhi last August. Earlier this year, it said it would establish new offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru.

Before Singh’s appointment, OpenAI’s India leadership footprint already expanded in phases. In 2024, it hired Pragya Misra, previously from Truecaller and Meta, to lead public policy and partnerships. OpenAI later expanded her role to head of strategy and global affairs last year. And before that. the company brought in Rishi Jaitly—former Twitter India head—as a senior adviser to help establish engagement with the Indian government on AI policy.

Those personnel moves have been matched by business activity. Over the past few months, OpenAI has struck partnerships across higher education, enterprise payments, AI-powered commerce, and web streaming. The company has also become part of India’s growing data center build-out. OpenAI points to the pace of ChatGPT adoption in the country as a sign of why India matters now. and it has named Indian conglomerates Reliance and Tata Group among its early partners.

The company’s staffing push is just as visible. OpenAI says it is hiring in India across roles that include AI deployment engineers, developer experience engineers, a developer marketing lead, a partner director, and solutions engineers.

India has turned into a battleground for U.S. AI companies, driven by its vast developer base, more than a billion internet users, and surging demand for generative AI. OpenAI’s new appointment lands as competition sharpens: rival Anthropic opened its India office in Bengaluru in late 2025 and named former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose as its India head earlier this year.

OpenAI’s staffing and partnerships have followed a simple rhythm: place leadership in the market. add offices as demand grows. then build the ecosystem around ChatGPT—consumer use. enterprise adoption. and the kind of policy engagement that can make or break the speed of expansion. With Singh joining in September and covering everything from regulatory engagement to operations. the company is effectively betting that execution in India will require more than product—it needs a dedicated operator on the ground.

OpenAI Prabhjeet Singh India managing director ChatGPT Uber India Kiran Mani Pragya Misra Rishi Jaitly Anthropic Irina Ghose AI partnerships data centers AI policy