Anthropic has appointed former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose to lead its India business as the USAI startup prepares to open an office in Bengaluru. The move underscores how India is becoming a key battleground for AI companies looking to expand beyond the US to major growth markets.

Goose brings deep Big Tech operating experience to the role. He spent 24 years at Microsoft before stepping down in December 2025. His appointment gives Entropic an experienced executive with local enterprise and government relationships as it prepares to establish an on-the-ground presence in one of the world’s fastest-growing AI markets.

India has become one of Anthropic’s most strategically important markets, with the country already ranking as the cloud’s second-largest user base and heavy use towards technical and work-related tasks, including software development. Arch-rival OpenAI is also shifting its focus to the market with plans to open an office in New Delhi—a sign India is fast becoming one of the most competitive arenas in the global race to commercialize generative AI.

Although India offers enormous scale — with more than a billion Internet users and more than 700 million smartphone users — that translating into meaningful revenue has proven difficult, forcing AI companies to experiment with aggressive pricing and promotions. Openei had last year introduced ChatGPT Go, its under-$5 plan aimed at attracting Indian users, and later made it available for free in the country for a year.

Similar dynamics are playing out for Anthropic: its Cloud app recorded a 48 percent year-over-year increase in downloads in India in September, reaching nearly 7,767,000 installs, while user spending rose 572 percent for the month to $195,000, still modest compared to the U.S., where it posted $2.5 million in September.

Anthropic is ramping up its engagement in India at a high level. Chief Executive Dario Amodi visited in October and met with corporate executives and lawmakers, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to discuss the company’s expansion plans and beefing up its tools. TechCrunch previously reported that Anthropic had also explored a possible partnership with billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries to expand access to the cloud. Reliance, however, eventually struck a deal with Google to offer its Gemini AI Pro plan free to Jio users. The move comes as rival Bharti Airtel partnered with Anxiety to bundle access to its premium subscription, underscoring how India’s telecom giants have become key distribution gatekeepers in the race to scale consumer AI services.

In a LinkedIn post announcing the move, Goss said She will focus on working with Indian enterprises, developers and startups that will adopt the cloud for “mission-critical” use cases, pointing to the growing demand for what she describes as “high-trust, enterprise-grade AI.” He added that vernacular AI could be a “force multiplier” in sectors including education and healthcare.

The anthropic, opinian, and perturbative push comes at a time when India’s native Jaina ecosystems remain in a relatively early stage of contraction. Although the country has a deep pool of software talent and a fast-growing base of AI users, it has produced few startups building large foundational models, with investors largely backing application-layer companies rather than the scale of capital typically required to train frontier systems.

The appointment also comes ahead of India’s AI Impact Summit 2026 in February, where the Indian Govt Expected to bring AI startups, global CEOs, and industry experts come together to discuss the next phase of AI deployment in the country. The summit is part of New Delhi’s broader effort to signal support for domestic AI development and position India as a serious player in the global AI landscape, as competition in major markets intensifies.

Anthropic is also building its India team Job Listing For roles including startup and enterprise account executives, as well as partner sales manager, it has signaled to deepen its go-to-market efforts and tap Indian businesses and startups as customers as it expands its presence in the country.

For Anthropic, the hire adds senior local leadership as it transforms growing India usage into a sustainable business, and navigates a market where distribution partnerships, pricing pressures, and enterprise adoption shape AI players as long-term winners.