OpenAI Names Uber India's Prabhjeet Singh as First India MD

OpenAI has appointed Prabhjeet Singh, former president of Uber India and South Asia, as its first managing director for India, a role TechCrunch reports that spans consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regulatory engagement, and operations. Singh announced his departure from Uber on Friday and is set to begin at OpenAI in September, reporting to Kiran Mani, the company's Asia Pacific managing director.

The hire reflects how seriously OpenAI is treating India: the company describes it as its second-largest market after the United States, with ChatGPT showing particularly strong adoption among 18-24 year-olds in a country with over one billion internet users. OpenAI has been building its local presence, opening a New Delhi office in August 2025 and planning additional offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru. A data center collaboration with Tata Group at 100MW capacity signals a longer-term infrastructure bet, not just a product distribution play.

Singh isn't arriving alone. OpenAI has already placed Pragya Misra, a former Truecaller and Meta executive, as its head of strategy and global affairs, and brought in Rishi Jaitly, former head of Twitter India, as a senior adviser for government engagement. Singh's operational mandate appears designed to translate that policy and strategy groundwork into actual market execution.

The competitive context is pointed. Anthropic recently appointed Irina Ghose, former managing director of Microsoft India, as its own India head, meaning both leading US AI labs are now racing to build dedicated local leadership at the same moment. What the reporting doesn't give you is how OpenAI plans to price for Indian consumers and enterprises, or when the planned Mumbai and Bengaluru offices will actually open. Singh's Uber India background is a deliberate signal about what OpenAI thinks the job requires: someone who has already navigated India's regulatory, payments, and partnership complexity at scale.