Airtel’s bold bet: Perplexity Pro lands on 370 mn phones, taking aim at Google in India’s AI race

Over 370 million Indians just got handed a Rs 17,000 AI subscription for free, last week. In an unprecedented move, Airtel partnered with AI search engine Perplexity to bundle its Pro plan for all subscribers, effectively giving India one of the largest mass-level onboarding exercises into premium AI tools. For most consumers, this was their first encounter with anything beyond ChatGPT. For industry insiders, it felt like the start of a distribution war that might upend how discovery, search, and advertising are done in the world’s largest democracy.

On paper, the Perplexity-Airtel deal looks like a classic telco bundling strategy. Airtel benefits from increased data consumption and engagement, potentially boosting its ARPU. Perplexity, in turn, gets instant reach to over 330 million users—no small feat for a relatively new player in the AI space. But dig deeper, and it reveals something more tectonic: a quiet attempt to bypass the Google ecosystem in one of its most valuable growth markets.

“This is a win-win,” said Viniit Mehta, founder of Pressplay Capital. “Even if only 10–15% of Airtel’s base uses Perplexity regularly, it’s enough to break the customer journey as marketers know it. Perplexity doesn’t behave like Google—it doesn’t offer ten blue links. It gives one answer, with citations, jumping steps in how people discover and decide.”

A New Mode of Search

Perplexity’s real edge isn’t just speed — it’s synthesis. Users get answers backed by sources, often with image-generation, file analysis, and multi-model comparison built in. Professionals who pay for Claude, GPT, and Grok often find themselves defaulting to Perplexity for research and content generation. “It combines the strengths of the others, while letting you validate claims,” one user posted after the Airtel launch. “For deep research, it’s unmatched.”

This matters because it marks a shift in how people are asking questions. As Gopa, a product strategist, puts it: “Google doesn’t get disrupted by a better interface. It gets disrupted when someone shifts the expectation of discovery.” And Perplexity is poking at that—especially among power users who value clarity over clutter.

Unlike traditional search where brands fight for visibility through SEO, Perplexity offers a more conversational path. The AI pulls from credible sources and provides direct answers. This means brands can’t game their way to the top—they need to be cited in the right context. As Sindhu Biswal, CEO and founder of Buzzlab explains: “Forget the old SERP playbook. You’re not optimizing pages anymore; you’re optimizing conversations. Credibility and clarity are the new currency.”

A Small Threat or a Strategic Provocation?

So, should Google be worried? Not immediately. Google's dominance is tied to its ownership of the digital plumbing—Chrome, Android, YouTube, Maps. It owns the ecosystem. Perplexity, for now, is just an elegant layer floating above it. But as Biswal cautioned, “Dismissing Perplexity as hype would be dangerously arrogant. Users are already responding to zero-click, citation-backed answers. If Google sleeps on this, that format might become the new normal.”

Currently, Perplexity’s model is still immature in terms of scale and personalization. It needs more user data to build behavioral models and refine recommendations. But that’s exactly what this Airtel deal offers: access to one of the largest data farms in the world. India is not just a testbed—it’s the raw material for algorithmic evolution.

“I tested the same nuanced question across GPT, Claude, LLaMA, and Perplexity,” said Gowthaman Ragothaman, Founding CEO of Saptharushi. “I got four different answers. That’s the problem. None of them are fully right. But Perplexity felt the most thoughtful.”

The Monetization Mirage

One big unknown remains: revenue. With an annual Pro price of ₹17,000–₹19,000, Perplexity is out of reach for the average Indian user once the Airtel bundle ends. And compared to ChatGPT’s ₹2,000 tier, the disparity feels stark. “They won’t pay,” admitted Ragothaman . “But this is where partnerships come in. Perplexity’s loss-making model means it can afford to discount while it figures out commerce. Think payments within recommendations. Think checkout buttons. This is about finding new monetization surfaces.”

Ads haven’t entered the equation—yet. But they will. The Netflix playbook is instructive: resist ads, then embrace them once scale stagnates. “Advertising is the apple every platform will eventually bite,” said the strategist. “That’s when things get real.”

And when they do, the implications for Indian adtech will be profound.

Marketers, Rewire Your Funnel

Perplexity changes the marketing funnel. It doesn’t guide users through awareness, interest, and decision—it collapses that journey into a single step. Users ask, get a clear answer, and potentially act on it—all without scrolling through multiple sources.

This is why advertisers and brand strategists are suddenly scrambling. “Where do you even rank in Perplexity?” asked Biswal. “There’s no SEO strategy. You have to be cited in data, articles, academic papers—wherever the AI pulls from. It’s a credibility game, not a click-through one.”

That shift is hard for agencies trained on CTRs and keyword domination. But it also opens up opportunity—for those who adapt.

The Bigger Play: Telcos vs Google?

The real story might not be Perplexity vs Google. It might be Airtel vs Google. Telcos like Airtel have long been dismissed as “dumb pipes”—infrastructure providers with little say in the content or discovery layer. But what if they start bundling AI tools, curating search behavior, and eventually inserting commerce or media offerings directly into those platforms?

“That’s the distribution war no one’s watching,” said Mehta. “This isn’t just a tech partnership. It’s a shot across the bow. If Jio or Vodafone Idea jump in, it could split the discovery landscape. Telcos have the billing relationships. They have the scale. Google doesn't own them.”

Even OEMs—smartphone manufacturers—could get into the mix. Imagine a phone that defaults to Perplexity or another LLM-backed engine instead of Google Search. Suddenly, the moat looks a little less deep.

From Curiosity to Default

What Perplexity lacks in infrastructure, it compensates with speed, clarity, and growing brand recognition. That’s how habits form—first with professionals and power users, then with the mainstream. And once a new expectation is set—clean answers, no noise, research-grade sourcing—it becomes hard to go back.

Google’s monopoly isn’t guaranteed. It’s a habit. And habits change faster than monopolies think. As Gopa Menon, COO & Co-founder at Theblur said, “Google doesn’t get disrupted by a better interface. It gets disrupted when someone shifts the expectation of discovery. Perplexity is poking at that—especially among power users and professionals who value speed and synthesis over link-hunting. But moat-wise, Google still owns the web’s plumbing: indexation, infrastructure, and massive ad demand. So Perplexity is more of a provocation than a threat for now. The danger comes if enough users start defaulting to answer engines first, and if advertisers follow—and I feel we are at that tipping point when this could start concerning Google.”

Biswal sums it up sharply, “You’re not trying to show up first. You’re trying to become the trusted answer.”

If Perplexity becomes that answer engine for even 10% of India’s digital users, the rules of the game will need rewriting. And Google, for the first time in years, might need to play catch-up.

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