4 min readNew DelhiFeb 21, 2026 09:03 AM IST
First published on: Feb 20, 2026 at 03:44 PM IST
India is fast emerging as one of the top countries with the most advanced users of ChatGPT. OpenAI, under a new public data initiative called OpenAI Signals, revealed that users in India are relying on ChatGPT not just for casual queries but increasingly for coding, data analysis, learning, and work-related tasks, etc. And all of this, often at rates far above global averages.
The data arrives at a time when ChatGPT just crossed 100 million weekly active users in India, essentially making it the largest market outside the US. According to the study, India is also the fastest-growing market for Codex, OpenAI’s coding-focused system. It reported a weekly usage increase by fourfold over the past two weeks.
According to OpenAI Signals, Indian users are adopting advanced technical capabilities at a significantly higher rate than users in other parts of the world. While the use of ChatGPT’s data analysis tools among Plus and Pro subscribers is about four times the global average, Codex usage for coding is about three times higher than the global trend. Coding-related queries are about three times the global median, and education-focused questions are close to twice the global median.
As per the report, this technical adoption is geographically concentrated in major technology hubs in India. Telangana is leading in coding-related usage, followed by Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
“AI adoption is moving faster than our ability to measure it, and that’s a challenge for anyone trying to make smart decisions,” said Ronnie Chatterji, Chief Economist at OpenAI. “Signals is our way of putting real-world evidence on the table, so India’s AI debate can be grounded in facts, not hype.”
Work-related use of ChatGPT in India also exceeded global benchmarks. Around 35 per cent of consumer messages in India are related to professional tasks, compared to about 30 per cent globally. At work, users mostly rely on AI for drafting and editing content, debugging and technical assistance, and speeding up routine workflows.
At the same time, consumer use has expanded beyond professional settings. Nearly two-thirds of messages are now non-work-related, reflecting growing use of ChatGPT in everyday life. Outside the workplace, about 35 per cent of messages focus on practical guidance, while roughly 20 per cent each are related to general information and writing tasks, indicating rising adoption for learning, decision-making, and personal productivity.
Age-wise, ChatGPT usage in India bends sharply younger than the global average. Users aged 18–24 account for just under half of all messages, compared to roughly one-third globally. Those aged 18–34 contribute around 80 per cent of all consumer messages, driving education and early-career-orientated use cases.
OpenAI Signals is, in simple words, a recurring public data initiative that provides privacy-preserving, de-identified indicators on how ChatGPT is being used across regions, age groups, and task categories. The initiative aims to support more evidence-based discussions on AI adoption and policy.
Taken together, the data suggests that AI use in India is moving rapidly from experimentation to execution, with a young user base integrating advanced tools into how they learn, work, and solve problems at scale.
Users in India are using ChatGPT Images 2.0 to create anime-style portraits, cinematic headshots, and fantasy-themed visuals, reflecting a surge in creative AI adoption. (Express Image). 
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