AI NewsOpenAI says 18 to 24-year-olds account for nearly 50% of ChatGPT usage in India

OpenAI says 18 to 24-year-olds account for nearly 50% of ChatGPT usage in India

8:20 PM IST · February 20, 2026

OpenAI seems to have found product-market fit with young Indians. The company said on Friday that users between 18 and 24 years of age accounted for nearly 50% of messages sent to ChatGPT in the country, and users under 30 accounted for 80%. The AI lab said Indians use ChatGPT mostly for work, with 35% of all messages relating to professional tasks, compared to 30% globally. In particular, the company’s coding assistant, Codex, is seeing strong traction: OpenAI said Indians use Codex three times more than the global median, and weekly usage has increased by four times since the toolgot a Mac apptwo weeks ago. Users in India are also asking three times as many coding-related questions as the median. This is in line with findings from Antropic, which earlier this week said45.2% of Claude’s tasks map to software-related use casesin India. OpenAI said outside of work tasks, 35% of messages to ChatGPT from Indians requested guidance, 20% concerned questions about general information, and 20% were requests for the bot to produce or help with writing. India is OpenAI’s second-largest market with more than 100 million weekly users, and the company has been actively trying to court Indians for its AI tools and services. The company offersa sub-$5 subscription tierin the country, and last year evenran promotional campaignsto spur adoption. “AI adoption is moving faster than our ability to measure it – and that’s a challenge for anyone trying to make smart decisions. Signals is our way of putting real-world evidence on the table, so India’s AI debate can be grounded in facts, not hype,” OpenAI’s chief economist Ronnie Chatterji said in a statement. OpenAI has had a busy few days in India, which is hosting a majorAI Impact Summitin New Delhi this week. The company is opening new offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru this year, and has signed a major partnership with conglomerate Tata Group tosecure 100 megawatts worth of AI compute capacityand distribute ChatGPT Enterprise within Tata’s IT services subsidiary, TCS. The AI lab has signed agreements withfintech Pine Labs, travel platforms Ixigo and Makemytrip, and food and grocery delivery company Eternal. It has also partnered with educational institutes to distribute its toolsto more than 100,000 students over the next six years.