Perplexity ran one of the boldest experiments in consumer AI over the past year: handing out free Pro subscriptions, normally $200, to Airtel’s 360 million Indian customers. The early verdict is in, and it’s more nuanced than either boosters or skeptics predicted.
The numbers are staggering. Perplexity pulled 5.9 million downloads in India in July 2025 alone — a 625% jump from June — and racked up 56 million downloads over the seven-month promo window, nine times what it had managed in the prior seven months. Monthly active users peaked at 22 million in October, a figure that would have been unthinkable before the Airtel deal. Then the music stopped. New redemptions closed January 16, and downloads cratered more than 90%, to 3.3 million between February and July.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Monthly active users didn’t collapse the way downloads did. They settled around 14 million in July — down 37% from the peak, but still more than five times the 2.6 million Perplexity averaged in early 2025. Sensor Tower’s Abe Yousef called the retention “resilient,” noting Perplexity has “significantly more users” in India than before the promotion.
Revenue, surprisingly, is heading the wrong way for the doom narrative — up, not down. In-app purchase and subscription revenue in India rose roughly 60% between February and mid-August compared to the promo period, despite the download cliff. And as the earliest Airtel subscribers hit their renewal dates in July, daily revenue climbed another 9% over the prior 30 days.
One caveat tempers the enthusiasm: those free subscriptions auto-renewed, meaning some of that revenue bump may be inertia rather than intent. Sensor Tower can’t distinguish between users who actively chose to pay and those who simply forgot to cancel. But even skeptical observers would concede that Perplexity has converted a freebie into something resembling a user base — a feat that has eluded plenty of global apps in India, where downloads have historically been cheap and revenue nearly impossible. The question now is whether those 14 million monthly actives represent a durable foothold or a sugar high that fades as renewal dates keep arriving.
