OpenAI Appoints Prabhjeet Singh Managing Director For India, Reporting To Kiran Mani

OpenAI named Prabhjeet Singh as its Managing Director for India in a statement issued Friday, saying India is among its top-priority markets and that Singh will become the company’s most senior leader in the country.

“OpenAI has appointed Prabhjeet Singh, the former president of Uber India and South Asia, as its first managing director for India — signaling a major escalation of its commitment to the country”

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Singh will join OpenAI in September and report to Kiran Mani, Managing Director for APAC Asia Pacific, with responsibility for performance across consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regulatory engagement, and operations.

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OpenAI said Singh’s focus will include building partnerships and supporting India’s wider AI ecosystem while helping more consumers, businesses, institutions, and government bodies use AI.

The appointment follows Singh’s role at Uber as President of India and South Asia, where he led the mobility business across India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and OpenAI said he is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and IIM Ahmedabad.

OpenAI also said it announced its first office in New Delhi in November 2025, linking the leadership move to its broader plans for India’s AI adoption.

OpenAI’s India push is framed alongside Sam Altman’s public remarks, with Goodreturns quoting Altman saying, "Whats happening in India with AI is really quite amazing," as he spoke at the India AI Summit in February this year.

Altman also described India’s "conviction" to invest across the AI stack, telling the summit, "The countrys conviction to invest in everything from the infrastructure layer to the model layer to the application layer on top, and the rapid adoption of the tools by people here is really quite something," according to the Goodreturns report.

Goodreturns

Rediff similarly ties the appointment to OpenAI’s continued investment in India, describing Singh as OpenAI’s "most senior leader" in India with responsibility for performance across consumer growth, enterprise adoption and partnerships, regulatory engagement and operations.

The Economic Times adds that Singh will join OpenAI in September and that the company’s statement said, "Prabhjeet will be OpenAI's most senior leader in India, with responsibility for our performance across consumer growth, enterprise adoption and partnerships, regulatory engagement and operations," while Singh’s departure from Uber was announced in an email to employees on Friday.

TechCrunch places the move in the context of OpenAI’s expanding footprint, saying the company opened its first office in New Delhi last August and earlier this year said it would establish new offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru.

Multiple outlets describe India as a major competitive arena for U.S. AI companies, with Bitcoin World saying India has become a critical battleground for U.S. AI companies and that OpenAI and rival Anthropic are expanding locally.

“Prabhjeet Singh has stepped down as President for India and South Asia at Uber after nearly a decade with the company He joined Uber in 2015 and rose from General Manager and Head of Strategy to lead the region as President from 2020 He may be headed to OpenAI India, Outlook Business has learnt OpenAI has appointed Prabhjeet Singh as its Managing Director for India, the company confirmed on Friday evening”

Outlook Business

Bitcoin World says Anthropic opened its Bengaluru office in late 2025 and earlier this year named former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose as its India head, while also describing OpenAI’s appointment as its first managing director for India.

TechCrunch adds that OpenAI has pointed to India’s rapidly growing adoption of ChatGPT as a sign of the market’s importance, and it names Reliance and Tata Group among early partners in the market.

The Economic Times says India is one of the largest markets of ChatGPT in terms of weekly active users and is a top-five country for users of its application programming interface, and it reports that Singh will report to OpenAI's Asia Pacific MD Kiran Mani.

In parallel, TechCrunch says OpenAI has ramped up hiring in India with openings including AI deployment engineers, developer experience engineers, a developer marketing lead, a partner director, and solutions engineers, as the company scales its presence in what it calls its biggest market outside the US.