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Perplexity India revenue rose 60% after Airtel free offer ended despite download decline
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Perplexity's partnership with Airtel offering free 12-month Pro subscriptions to 360 million customers drove 56 million downloads in India, and revenue rose about 60% after the offer ended even as downloads fell more than 90%.
This is one of the first large-scale data points on whether free AI giveaways convert to paying users in price-sensitive markets. The revenue increase is promising but ambiguous, since auto-renewals may be charging users who simply failed to cancel rather than deliberately chose to pay.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
Perplexity's Airtel offer drove 56 million downloads in India over seven months, with monthly active users peaking at 22 million in October before settling at 14 million in July.
Downloads fell more than 90% after the offer closed to new users in January, but monthly active users remained five times above pre-offer levels.
India revenue rose about 60% after the offer ended, though Sensor Tower cannot distinguish between genuine conversions and revenue from auto-renewals catching users who did not cancel.
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