Google’s Gemini AI hits 450M users as India strategy accelerates

Google’s Gemini AI assistant has crossed a significant milestone, surpassing 450 million monthly active users while daily usage surged more than 50 percent compared to the previous quarter. This growth comes as Google deepens its artificial intelligence investments in India through a series of strategic initiatives targeting students, farmers, and developers.

The user growth represents a major validation of Google’s AI strategy, particularly as the company faces intensifying competition from OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other AI assistants. Shekar Khosla, Vice President of Marketing and Site Lead at Google India, announced the milestone on LinkedIn, noting the “growing momentum” behind the Gemini platform.

Free AI access for Indian students

Google is offering its premium AI Pro subscription—normally priced at Rs 19,500 ($230) annually—free to Indian college students aged 18 and above through September 15, 2025. The initiative provides access to Gemini 2.5 Pro, Google’s most advanced AI model, along with creative tools like Veo 3 for video generation and Deep Research capabilities.

The program extends beyond basic homework assistance to include job interview preparation, complex topic analysis, and AI-powered writing assistance in Google Docs and Gmail. Students also receive 2TB of free cloud storage and access to NotebookLM, Google’s AI-powered research assistant.

This educational push reflects Google’s broader strategy to build AI adoption among younger users who will shape future technology preferences. By providing free access to premium features, Google aims to establish Gemini as the default AI assistant for India’s next generation of professionals.

Telecom partnerships expand reach

Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom operator, has partnered with Perplexity AI to offer free 12-month subscriptions worth Rs 17,000 ($200) to all 360 million of its customers across mobile, broadband, and direct-to-home services. Perplexity operates as an AI-powered search engine that provides detailed answers to user queries, competing directly with traditional search engines.

This partnership demonstrates how telecom companies are leveraging AI services as value-added offerings to differentiate themselves in India’s competitive market. For Google, such partnerships provide distribution channels to reach millions of users who might not otherwise discover AI tools.

The Gemini app launched officially in India in June 2024, supporting nine Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. Android users can access Gemini through a standalone app, Google Assistant integration, or voice commands.

Agriculture-focused AI initiatives

Google has introduced the Agricultural Monitoring and Event Detection (AMED) API, designed to provide field-level crop monitoring across India’s vast agricultural sector. The system builds upon Google’s earlier Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API, offering farmers and agricultural businesses detailed data about crop types, growing seasons, field sizes, and three years of historical agricultural activity.

An API, or Application Programming Interface, serves as a bridge that allows different software systems to communicate and share data. In this case, the AMED API enables agricultural technology companies to access Google’s satellite imagery and AI analysis to build farming applications.

The system updates approximately every two weeks, providing near real-time insights that can help farmers optimize irrigation, predict harvest volumes, and manage crop-specific requirements. This technology addresses critical challenges in Indian agriculture, where small-scale farmers often lack access to advanced monitoring tools that could improve yields and reduce losses.

TerraStack, a startup incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), exemplifies practical applications of this technology. The company has built a rural land intelligence system that supports agricultural lending, land record modernization, and climate risk assessment by using Google’s API to identify farm boundaries and detect land ownership changes.

Language and cultural localization

Google announced partnerships with three Indian AI startups—Sarvam, Soket AI, and Gnani—under India’s national AI Mission to develop indigenous language models. These companies are building AI systems based on Google’s open-source Gemma architecture, which provides the foundational framework for creating specialized AI applications.

The company is also collaborating with IIT Bombay’s BharatGen project to improve automatic speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS) technologies for Indian languages. These technologies enable AI systems to better understand spoken Indian languages and respond in natural-sounding voices, crucial for a country where hundreds of millions of people prefer voice interaction over typing.

Additionally, Google launched its Amplify Initiative in partnership with IIT Kharagpur to create structured datasets capturing India’s linguistic and cultural diversity. This effort addresses a fundamental challenge in AI development: most large language models are trained primarily on English-language data, making them less effective for users who communicate in other languages or cultural contexts.

Strategic implications for Google

These initiatives reflect Google’s recognition that India represents both a massive growth opportunity and a testing ground for AI technologies that could be applied globally. With over 1.4 billion people and rapidly expanding internet access, India offers scale that few other markets can match.

The focus on agriculture is particularly strategic, given that farming employs nearly half of India’s workforce. By developing AI tools that address real agricultural challenges, Google positions itself as a technology partner for one of the world’s most important economic sectors.

Google’s emphasis on local languages also addresses a competitive vulnerability. While English-language AI systems dominate global markets, companies that can effectively serve users in their native languages may capture significant market share in non-English speaking regions.

Broader ecosystem development

Indian startups are already leveraging Google’s AI capabilities for practical applications. Cropin has used Gemini to build Cropin Sage, described as the world’s first real-time agricultural intelligence solution, helping a major U.S. agricultural processing company reduce supply chain risks from climate-related disruptions.

Manipal Hospital has implemented a Gemini-powered system that reduces the time nurses spend on patient handovers between shifts by more than half, allowing medical staff to focus more on direct patient care.

These examples demonstrate how AI tools are moving beyond consumer applications to address specific business and operational challenges across industries.

Market positioning and competition

Google’s comprehensive approach in India—spanning education, agriculture, telecommunications, and language development—represents a significant investment in long-term market development. Rather than simply launching products, the company is building an ecosystem of partnerships, applications, and localized capabilities.

This strategy becomes more critical as competition intensifies in the AI space. Microsoft-backed OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI companies are also expanding internationally, making early market establishment crucial for maintaining competitive advantage.

The 450 million user milestone for Gemini, while impressive, still trails ChatGPT’s reported user base. However, Google’s integration of AI across its existing product ecosystem—from search to productivity tools—provides distribution advantages that standalone AI companies cannot easily replicate.

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly central to business operations and consumer experiences, Google’s India strategy offers a blueprint for how technology companies can build sustainable competitive advantages in emerging markets through localization, partnership development, and sector-specific applications.