OpenAI is expanding its footprint in India and entering the country’s higher education system through partnerships with leading academic institutions. The move comes as the South Asian country seeks to expand AI skills and build domestic capacity in one of the world’s largest talent markets.
OpenAI announced on Wednesday that it is partnering with six public and private higher education institutions in India, including top institutions focused on engineering, management, healthcare, and design, with the goal of serving more than 100,000 students, faculty, and staff over the next 12 months.
The initiative focuses on integrating AI into core academic functions, rather than focusing on consumer use, and demonstrates OpenAI’s interest in influencing how AI is taught, managed, and normalized within one of the world’s largest higher education systems.
According to CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI has already built a large consumer base for its ChatGPT chatbot, with over 100 million monthly active users in India, which has emerged as the company’s second-largest user base after the United States. The announcement also coincides with a broader push by leading AI companies to increase their presence in India, where the AI Impact Summit will be held in New Delhi this week.
The initial group of partners includes some of India’s most influential academic institutions such as the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and All India Institute of Medical Sciences New Delhi, as well as private universities and design colleges. ChatGPT’s creators said the partnership will span fields ranging from engineering and management to healthcare and creative fields.
India has already emerged as an important testing ground for the use of AI in education. Last month, Google announced that India is the world’s most used learning tool for its Gemini tools. Microsoft also announced this week that it will expand its upskilling program in India to train teachers across schools, vocational colleges and higher education settings, and work with government agencies as part of a broader push to build AI skills at scale.
OpenAI said the partnership includes campus-wide access to the ChatGPT Edu tool, faculty training, and responsible use framework. The company says it is focused on incorporating AI into core academic workflows such as coding, research, analysis, and case analysis, rather than providing access to standalone tools.
Two of the partner institutions, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and Manipal Academy of Higher Education, will also introduce OpenAI-backed certifications. Additionally, OpenAI said it will collaborate with Indian education technology platforms such as PhysicsWallah, upGrad and HCL GUVI to extend AI training beyond the campus. These platforms launch structured courses on AI fundamentals and ChatGPT use cases for students and early career professionals.
Raghav Gupta, head of education at OpenAI India, said that as skills demand changes across the economy, educational institutions are a “vital conduit” to bridge the gap between rapidly advancing AI tools and how people actually use them.
Last year, OpenAI hired Mr. Gupta, a former Coursera Asia Pacific managing director, as head of education for India and Asia Pacific, in parallel with the launch of its Learning Accelerator program focused on improving AI skills.
The flurry of moves into education underscores how AI companies are increasingly looking beyond consumer tools and business customers to the institutions that shape skills, norms, and long-term adoption. For a country like India, this contest is not just about access to AI, but also about who will help define how AI is taught, managed, and integrated at scale.
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