ChatGPT.
Credit: Reuters Photo
New Delhi: OpenAI’s ChatGPT, launched in late 2022, has reshaped the artificial intelligence (AI) industry transforming it from a specialised technical domain into a mainstream utility. The Sam Altman-led platform claims to have 80 crore weekly active users worldwide in October, more than double the number recorded at the beginning of the year.
India has emerged as ChatGPT’s largest user base, with at least one in every eight users coming from the country. Since its launch, ChatGPT has recorded over 11 crore downloads in India, significantly ahead of the nearly 8 crore downloads in the US.
The platform’s impact is being felt across sectors, including software, retail, financial services and media.
“Over the past three years, AI—accelerated by platforms like ChatGPT—has fundamentally reshaped service delivery across India’s financial ecosystem,” said Deepak Aggarwal, co-founder of Moneyboxx Finance Limited.
“Earlier, AI was largely limited to basic automation and conventional scoring models. Today, it acts as an intelligent decision-making engine, strengthening underwriting, improving risk assessment, enhancing customer service and boosting operational efficiency.”
Aggarwal added that the shift from manual, paper-driven systems to real-time, data-led processes has reduced turnaround times and improved access for underserved borrowers.
For years, Google dominated web search, remaining the backbone of the online information ecosystem. While it continues to hold that position, ChatGPT has captured a significant share of user attention in just three years.
OpenAI, founded as a non-profit research organisation in 2015, introduced its Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) models in 2018. GPT-3, launched in 2020, forms the core AI model behind ChatGPT introduced in late 2022.
Trained on vast amounts of internet text, ChatGPT can answer questions, explain complex concepts, generate articles, emails, poems and stories, write code and transcribe, translate and summarise long texts. According to an OpenAI survey released earlier this month, ChatGPT Enterprise users save an average of 40–60 minutes a day.
50% of users are students
Nearly half of ChatGPT users in India are students. To expand its reach among them, OpenAI recently announced the “Chats for Students in India” initiative and made its ChatGPT Go plan free for Indian users for one year starting November 4, 2025. These initiatives are likely to further boost its user base in the country.