How the Airtel deal handed out a free Pro subscription
Start with the terms. Even by the standards of AI customer acquisition, the scale here was unusual.
The offer covered 360 million Airtel customers
Airtel is one of India's largest telecom operators. On July 17, 2025, it announced a free 12-month Perplexity Pro subscription for every mobile, Wi-Fi, and DTH customer it had. Pro listed at 17,000 rupees a year. The press release described what that unlocked: more daily Pro searches, access to advanced models including GPT-4.1 and Claude with the ability to pick between them, deep research, image generation, file uploads and analysis, and Perplexity Labs. It was Perplexity's first partnership with an Indian telecom company, redeemed through the Airtel Thanks app.
"New Delhi, July 17, 2025: Bharti Airtel has partnered with Perplexity, to offer 12-month Perplexity Pro subscription free of cost to all its 360mn customers." (opening line)／"Perplexity Pro includes more daily Pro searches per user, access to advanced AI models (e.g., GPT 4.1, Claude) and the ability to select specific models, deep research, image generation, file uploads and analysis, as well as Perplexity Labs, a unique tool that brings ideas to life. Perplexity Pro is priced globally at *INR 17000 for a year." (what Pro includes)／"This Pro subscription, worth *Rs. 17000, is now available for free, for all Airtel customers (Mobile, Wi- Fi and DTH) for one year. This marks Perplexity’s first partnership with an Indian telecom company." (offer terms)／"All Airtel users can avail this offer by logging-on to the Airtel Thanks App." (redemption)— from Airtel's press release
Each free year runs from activation, not the cutoff
Pro normally ran about $200. New redemptions closed on January 16, 2026, but the clock on each subscription started when that person activated it. Expirations therefore arrive in a long tail rather than all at once, beginning with whoever signed up first. Auto-renewal is the default, which puts the burden on the subscriber: anyone who does not want a charge has to opt out before their renewal date.
"In July 2025, Perplexity partnered with Airtel, India’s second-biggest telecom operator, to offer a free 12-month Perplexity Pro subscription, normally worth about $200, to the Indian carrier’s 360 million customers. New redemptions ended on January 16. However, because subscribers retained Pro for a year from activation, the earliest users began reaching the end of their free access last month and had to opt out of auto-renewal if they did not want to be charged."— from TechCrunch
What app downloads and monthly active users did
Everything below is a third-party estimate rather than a company-confirmed figure.
Downloads jumped 625% in the launch month
Sensor Tower puts Indian downloads at 5.9 million in July 2025, a 625% jump over the previous month. That single month beat the 5.4 million Perplexity had accumulated across the entire first half of the year. Nor was it a one-month spike: across the seven months redemptions stayed open, downloads reached 56 million, more than nine times the preceding seven-month stretch.
Appfigures reads it the same way. Daily downloads ran near 11,200 in the week before the partnership, hit roughly 223,000 in the launch week, and climbed to about 305,000 a day between mid-September and mid-October. Downloads for ChatGPT and Claude stayed roughly flat over the same window, which is how the firm ruled out a general rise in AI demand.
"Perplexity’s AI giveaway had an immediate impact, as it saw 5.9 million app downloads in India in July 2025, according to data Sensor Tower shared with TechCrunch. That was up 625% from the previous month and more downloads in a single month than the 5.4 million Perplexity had accumulated during the entire first half of the year." (launch-month figure)／"Perplexity recorded 56 million downloads during the seven months that the offer was available to new users, more than nine times the preceding seven-month period, Sensor Tower estimated." (seven-month total)／"I compared Perplexity’s downloads to ChatGPT and Claude to ensure it wasn’t more appetite for AI, and it wasn’t," (Appfigures comment)／"In the week before the Airtel offer launched, Perplexity averaged about 11,200 downloads a day in India, per Appfigures. That jumped twentyfold to nearly 223,000 a day during the first week of the offer’s launch and continued climbing, hitting an average of about 305,000 a day between mid-September and mid-October."／"To compare, downloads of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude remained broadly stable." (Appfigures daily downloads)— from TechCrunch
Downloads fell more than 90% once redemptions closed
The drop after January was immediate. Sensor Tower estimates 3.3 million Indian downloads between February and July, more than 90% below the preceding six months. Stop giving the product away and the inflow of new installs stops with it — a correspondence blunt enough that it barely needs interpreting.
"Sensor Tower estimates Perplexity was downloaded 3.3 million times in India between February and July, down more than 90% from the preceding six months."— from TechCrunch
Monthly active users held above five times the baseline
The people already acquired proved stickier than the install curve. Monthly active users peaked around 22 million in October 2025 and stood at nearly 14 million in July 2026. That is 37% off the high, but still more than five times the roughly 2.6 million Perplexity averaged across the first half of 2025. Sensor Tower's read is that a decline was the natural consequence of a time-limited promotion, and that ongoing usage held up anyway.
"Monthly active users, which peaked at about 22 million in October, stood at nearly 14 million in July — down 37% from that high but still more than five times the about 2.6 million monthly users Perplexity averaged in the first half of 2025, per Sensor Tower." (monthly active users)／"While the time-sensitive nature of this promotion would naturally lead to a decline in adoption after the offer period, ongoing usage has remained resilient," (Sensor Tower comment)／"Perplexity did not respond to a request for comment." (statement of record)— from TechCrunch
What was left once the free year ran out
What the company giving the product away actually wants to know is how many people pay once the free year ends.
Subscription revenue in India rose about 60%
Here the curves diverge. Across February to mid-August — the same window in which downloads fell by 90% — Sensor Tower estimates that in-app purchase and subscription revenue in India rose roughly 60% compared with the period when the Airtel offer was open. Narrowing to roughly July 18 through August 12, when the first cohort's free year began lapsing, average daily in-app purchase revenue ran 9% above the preceding 30 days and 27% above the first-half 2026 average.
Appfigures traces the same climb from further back. Monthly net mobile revenue in India went from about $34,000 in January 2025 to $70,000 that December and $156,000 in July 2026. The first seven months of 2026 produced an estimated $878,000, 16% above all of 2025.
"Sensor Tower estimates that Perplexity’s in-app purchase and subscription revenue in India between February and mid-August rose about 60% from the period when the Airtel offer was available to new users, despite the decline in downloads." (February to mid-August)／"From around July 18 through August 12, Perplexity’s average daily in-app purchase revenue in India, per Sensor Tower, was 9% higher than during the preceding 30 days and 27% above the average for the first half of 2026." (the expiry window)／"Perplexity’s monthly net mobile revenue in the country, per Appfigures, grew from about $34,000 in January 2025 to $70,000 in December and reached $156,000 in July 2026." (Appfigures monthly revenue)／"The AI company generated an estimated $878,000 in India in the first seven months of 2026, up 16% from all of 2025." (Appfigures year-to-date)— from TechCrunch
Auto-renewal makes that revenue hard to read
Treating the increase as proof that free users chose to stay would be reading past the mechanism. The free subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled, so a charge is what happens by default. Sensor Tower says it cannot separate people who missed the cancellation window from people who decided to pay, nor former Airtel subscribers from other paying customers. Appfigures adds another confounder: the sheer visibility the promotion generated may have pulled in paying users who were never part of the giveaway at all.
"This makes it possible that some of the increase reflects users who did not cancel in time rather than those who actively chose to pay. Sensor Tower cannot distinguish between those scenarios or separate former Airtel subscribers from other paying customers." (Sensor Tower caveat)／"The enormous visibility generated by the promotion, he noted, may also have attracted paying users who were never part of the giveaway." (Appfigures caveat)— from TechCrunch
OpenAI and Google placed the same bet in India
Perplexity no longer owns this experiment. In August 2025, OpenAI made its lower-priced ChatGPT Go plan free for a year in India, and Google struck a deal giving eligible Reliance Jio users 18 free months of AI Pro. Perplexity's Airtel deal predates both by months. That makes these Indian subscribers one of the first large cohorts to reach the far end of a free year at all. India is already the world’s largest market for generative AI app downloads and remains famously hard to monetize, so whether trading near-term revenue for users and habit pays off is a question the coming months of renewals will answer.
"In August 2025, OpenAI made its lower-priced ChatGPT Go plan free for a year in the country. Google also followed Perplexity with a deal to offer its AI Pro subscription free for 18 months to eligible Reliance Jio users." (OpenAI and Google deals)／"Its Airtel deal began months before the similar moves by OpenAI and Google." (relative timing)／"India has already emerged as the world’s largest market for generative AI app downloads but remains difficult to monetize." (market context)— from TechCrunch
Each research firm builds its estimates on different assumptions, and the caveats sit in the body of the original reporting rather than its headline. Converting the article to Markdown keeps the numbers next to the qualifier that belongs to them.
Summary
Perplexity's free year in India ended up with three curves pointing three ways. Downloads collapsed by more than 90% the moment redemptions closed, monthly active users held at over five times the pre-deal level, and revenue went up rather than down. Auto-renewal, though, means a larger revenue number is not the same as a larger number of people who decided the product was worth paying for. OpenAI and Google are running the same play on similar terms, and their answers are still ahead. For how the broader assistant market is shifting, see our piece on ChatGPT's share falling below 50%, also built on Sensor Tower data.
