Anthropic has appointed Irina Ghose, former managing director of Microsoft India, to lead the US AI startup’s India business. preparing to open an office in Bengaluru. The move underscores how India is a key battleground for AI companies looking to tap into the US as a key growth market.
Ghose brings deep big-tech operations experience to the role. He spent 24 years at Microsoft before stepping down in December 2025. The appointment gives Anthropic an executive with experience with local companies and government relations as it looks to establish a presence on the ground in one of the world’s fastest-growing AI markets.
India has become one of Anthropic’s most strategic markets, with the country ranked as the second largest user base for Claude and usage heavily skewed toward technical and work-related tasks, including software development. Arch rival OpenAI is also sharpening its focus on the market with plans opened an office in New Delhi – marks India fast becoming one of the most contested arenas in the global race to commercialize generative AI.
While India offers enormous scale — with more than one billion internet subscribers and more than 700 million smartphone users — turning that reach into meaningful revenue has proven difficult, forcing AI companies to experiment with aggressive pricing and promotions. OpenAI last year introducing ChatGPT Goplan under $5 aimed at attracting Indian users, and later made it available free for one year in the country.
The same dynamics played for Anthropic: the Claude app recorded an increase of 48% from the previous year in downloads in India in September, reaching about 767,000 installs, while consumer spending surged 572% to $ 195,000 for the month, according to Appfigures – still modest compared to the US, where September spending hit $ 2 million.
Anthropic has increased its engagement in India at the highest level. Director General Dario Amodei opened in October and met company executives and legislators, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to discuss the company’s expansion plans and the adoption of many of its private. Anthropic has also been exploring a potential partnership with billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries to expand access to Claude, as TechCrunch previously reported. Reliance, however, ended up making a deal with Google to offer The Gemini AI Pro plan is free for Jio customers. The move comes as rival Bharti Airtel partners with Perplexity bundled access to a premium subscriptionunderlines how the Indian telecom giant has become a critical distribution gatekeeper in the race to scale consumer AI services.
In a LinkedIn post announcing the move, Ghose said he will focus on working with Indian companies, developers and startups that use Claude for “mission-critical” use cases, indicating the growing demand for what he describes as “reliable, high-end enterprise-level AI.” He added that local language-friendly AI could be a “force multiplier” in all sectors including education and healthcare – signaling Anthropic’s intention to increase adoption beyond early adopters of the technology to larger institutions and the public sector.
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The push by Anthropic, OpenAI, and Perplexity comes as India’s GenAI ecosystem remains in its early stages. While the country has deep software talent and a rapidly growing AI user base, it has produced some startups build large basic modelswith investors instead of generally supporting application layer companies instead of doing the scale of capital that is usually required to train frontier systems.
The appointment also comes ahead of the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in February, where the Indian government expected to bring together with AI startups, global CEOs, and industry experts to discuss the next phase of AI deployment in the country. The summit is part of New Delhi’s broader effort to signal its support for domestic AI development and position India as a serious player in the global AI landscape, as competition increases in key markets.
Anthropic is also building its Indian team, with job list for roles including startup and corporate account executives as well as partner sales managers, signaling a push to deepen its Go-to-market efforts and tap Indian businesses and startups as customers as they expand their presence in the country.
For Anthropic, the hire adds a senior local leader as it will turn India’s continued use into a sustainable business, navigating a market where distribution partnerships, pricing pressure, and enterprise adoption will shape the AI players that will be long-term winners.