OpenAI to Show Ads in India, Poaches Meta's APAC Growth Chief

OpenAI is bringing advertising to ChatGPT's Free and Go tiers in India, its largest user market by weekly active users. The move pairs a monetization push with a leadership hire aimed squarely at deepening the company's footprint across South and Southeast Asia.

Starting next month, marketers will be able to buy ads through a new manager tool, with a daily minimum spend of ₹725 (about $7.60). OpenAI is launching the India ad program with roughly 50 brands on board, brought in through partnerships with agency holding companies WPP and Omnicom.

The India rollout follows a pattern OpenAI has already run elsewhere. Ads first appeared for U.S. users in February 2026, then expanded to Europe earlier this August, with Dave Dugan, OpenAI's head of global ads solutions, overseeing the broader effort.

India's scale explains the urgency. OpenAI said weekly active users in the country topped 100 million in February 2026, and the company had already tried to lock in that audience with a discounted ChatGPT Go tier launched in August 2025, including a full year of free access for Indian users.

A Meta executive switches sides

Alongside the ad launch, OpenAI is bringing in Sandhya Devanathan, currently Meta's vice president for India and Southeast Asia, to join the company. She will relocate to Singapore and take charge of consumer growth, enterprise adoption, and regulatory engagement across Southeast Asia and Australia, reporting to Kiran Mani, OpenAI's Asia-Pacific managing director.

Her hire follows an earlier one from a different corner of the tech industry: Prabhjeet Singh, formerly Uber's India head, is already leading OpenAI's expansion efforts in that country. Together, the two hires suggest OpenAI is building out a regional management layer with direct experience running consumer platforms at scale in Asia, rather than directing the region from San Francisco.

Ads meet a fast-growing revenue base

The advertising expansion arrives as OpenAI's business grows quickly. The company reported $6.7 billion in revenue for the quarter ended June 2026, up from $5.7 billion the prior quarter.

Ads on free and low-cost tiers give OpenAI a way to monetize the vast majority of its user base that never pays for a subscription. India, with its enormous ChatGPT audience and price-sensitive market, is a natural proving ground for that strategy before it potentially spreads to other high-growth regions.