Anthropic has appointed Irina Ghose, a former Microsoft India managing director, to guide its India enterprise because the U.S. AI startup prepares to open an office in Bengaluru. The transfer underscores how India is turning into a key battleground for AI firms seeking to increase past the U.S. for main progress markets.
Ghose brings deep big-tech working expertise to the function. She spent 24 years at Microsoft earlier than stepping down in December 2025. Her appointment offers Anthropic a seasoned govt with native enterprise and authorities relationships because it gears as much as set up an on-the-ground presence in one of many world’s fastest-growing AI markets.
India has develop into certainly one of Anthropic’s most strategically essential markets, with the nation already rating because the second-largest person base for Claude and utilization closely skewing towards technical and work-related duties, together with software program growth. Arch-rival OpenAI can be sharpening its focus available on the market with plans to open an office in New Delhi — an indication India is quick turning into one of the contested arenas within the international race to commercialize generative AI.
Whereas India affords monumental scale — with greater than a billion web subscribers and over 700 million smartphone customers — changing that attain into significant income has confirmed tough, pushing AI firms to experiment with aggressive pricing and promotions. OpenAI final yr introduced ChatGPT Go, its under-$5 plan geared toward attracting Indian customers, and later made it available free for a year within the nation.
Related dynamics are taking part in out for Anthropic: its Claude app recorded a 48% enhance from the earlier yr in downloads in India in September, reaching about 767,000 installs, whereas client spending surged 572% to $195,000 for the month, per Appfigures — nonetheless modest in contrast with the U.S., the place September spending hit $2.5 million.
Anthropic has been stepping up its engagement in India on the highest ranges. Chief govt Dario Amodei visited in October and met company executives and lawmakers, together with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to debate the corporate’s growth plans and rising adoption of its instruments. Anthropic had additionally explored a possible partnership with billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries to broaden entry to Claude, as TechCrunch reported beforehand. Reliance, nevertheless, in the end struck a take care of Google to supply its Gemini AI Pro plan free to Jio subscribers. That transfer got here as rival Bharti Airtel partnered with Perplexity to bundle access to its premium subscription, underscoring how India’s telecom giants have develop into important distribution gatekeepers within the race to scale client AI companies.
In a LinkedIn submit saying the transfer, Ghose said she would give attention to working with Indian enterprises, builders and startups adopting Claude for “mission-critical” use instances, pointing to rising demand for what she described as “high-trust, enterprise-grade AI.” She added that AI tailor-made to native languages might be a “pressure multiplier” throughout sectors together with schooling and healthcare — signaling Anthropic’s intent to deepen adoption past early tech customers into bigger establishments and the general public sector.
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
The push by Anthropic, OpenAI, and Perplexity comes as India’s homegrown GenAI ecosystem stays comparatively early-stage. Whereas the nation has a deep pool of software program expertise and a fast-growing base of AI customers, it has produced few startups building large foundation models, with traders as a substitute largely backing application-layer firms quite than committing the dimensions of capital usually required to coach frontier techniques.
The appointment additionally comes forward of India’s AI Affect Summit 2026 in February, the place the Indian authorities is expected to bring collectively AI startups, international CEOs, and trade consultants to debate the subsequent part of AI deployment within the nation. The summit is a part of New Delhi’s broader effort to sign help for home AI growth and place India as a critical participant within the international AI panorama, as competitors intensifies throughout main markets.
Anthropic can be constructing out its India staff, with job listings for roles together with startup and enterprise account executives in addition to a associate gross sales supervisor, signaling a push to deepen its go-to-market efforts and faucet Indian companies and startups as prospects because it expands its presence within the nation.
For Anthropic, the rent provides senior native management because it appears to show India’s surging utilization right into a sturdy enterprise, navigating a market the place distribution partnerships, pricing strain, and enterprise adoption will form which AI gamers emerge as long-term winners.
