Rising use of ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity makes India largest LLM market globally: Report

New Delhi: Growing use of platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity has made India the world’s largest market for large language model (LLM) adoption, according to a report by Bofa Securities.

The brokerage described India as an “ideal test bed” for agentic AI applications built on top of LLMs that can reason, plan and execute tasks independently.

However, the report also flagged potential implications for the domestic startup ecosystem.

According to Bofa Securities, ChatGPT downloads peaked at over 24 million in July before easing slightly and plateauing at around 24 million following the introduction of zero-cost subscriptions by OpenAI. Perplexity, meanwhile, saw downloads peak at over 20 million in October, supported by bundled offerings from Airtel.

ChatGPT currently leads the LLM market in India with around 145 million monthly active users, followed by Google’s Gemini at 105 million, the report said.

On a daily basis, approximately 65 million users in India access OpenAI-led ChatGPT, while Gemini records around 15 million daily average users.

India accounts for over 16 per cent of ChatGPT’s global user base, making it the platform’s largest market, the report noted.

The country is also the largest market for competing platforms. India contributes 30% of Google Gemini’s monthly average users and 38% of Perplexity’s monthly average users, according to Bofa Securities.

Complimentary subscriptions to LLM applications offered by domestic telecom operators were cited as one of the key factors driving adoption.

Other contributing factors include India’s base of over 700 million mobile users, access to low-cost data plans allowing consumption of more than 20 GB of data for about USD 2 per month, and a young, English-speaking population.

The report described adoption at scale as a “win-win” for consumers and global LLM providers. Consumers benefit through improved productivity, learning outcomes and reduced language barriers, with many applications available in regional languages.

Global LLM providers, in turn, gain access to large and diverse datasets that can be used to train and refine models, including improving responses to multilingual and culturally nuanced queries.

The trend was also described as positive for telecom operators. Bofa Securities said companies in the highly competitive sector could expand average revenue per user, create opportunities for future upselling through targeted offerings, and explore collaboration opportunities in the data centre space with global players.

On the potential impact on domestic startups, the report cautioned that global LLMs could establish dominance before local models are able to mature or scale, drawing parallels with Meta and Google’s dominance through platforms such as Facebook and YouTube.

It added that the network effects enjoyed by global LLMs could place them in a stronger position to meet local consumer demand through agentic AI wrappers than Indian startups.