Anthropic taps former Microsoft India MD to lead Bengaluru expansion

Anthropic has appointed Irina Ghose, former managing director of Microsoft India, to head its India operations as the U.S.-based AI company prepares to open an office in Bengaluru. The move highlights India’s growing importance as a key expansion market for global AI companies seeking growth beyond the United States.

Ghose brings more than two decades of experience in big tech. She spent 24 years at Microsoft before stepping down in December 2025. Her appointment gives Anthropic an executive with deep experience in enterprise sales and government engagement as it establishes a physical presence in one of the world’s fastest-growing AI hubs.

India has emerged as one of Anthropic’s most strategically important markets. The country is already the second-largest user base for Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, with usage heavily concentrated around technical and work-related tasks such as software development. Rival OpenAI is also intensifying its focus on India, with plans to open an office in New Delhi, underscoring how competitive the global race to commercialise generative AI has become.

While India offers massive scale — with more than a billion internet users and over 700 million smartphone users — turning that reach into significant revenue has been challenging. This has pushed AI companies to experiment with aggressive pricing and promotional strategies. OpenAI last year introduced ChatGPT Go, a sub-$5 plan aimed at Indian users, and later made it available free for a year in the country.

Similar trends are playing out for Anthropic. According to Appfigures, downloads of the Claude app in India rose 48% year over year in September to around 767,000. Consumer spending in the country surged 572% to about $195,000 for the month — still modest compared with the U.S., where spending reached $2.5 million during the same period.

Anthropic has been increasing its engagement at senior levels in India. CEO Dario Amodei visited India in October, meeting business leaders and policymakers, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to discuss expansion plans and the adoption of the company’s AI tools. Anthropic had also explored a potential partnership with Reliance Industries, led by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, to broaden access to Claude. Reliance ultimately partnered with Google to offer its Gemini AI Pro plan free to Jio subscribers. At the same time, rival Bharti Airtel partnered with Perplexity to bundle access to its premium service, highlighting how telecom companies have become key distribution channels for consumer AI in India.

In a LinkedIn post announcing her new role, Ghose said she would focus on working with Indian enterprises, developers, and startups using Claude for mission-critical applications. She pointed to growing demand for what she described as “high-trust, enterprise-grade AI.” She noted that AI adapted to local languages could significantly expand adoption across sectors such as education and healthcare.

The expansion efforts by Anthropic, OpenAI, and Perplexity come as India’s domestic generative AI ecosystem remains in an early stage. Despite a deep pool of software talent and rapidly growing AI usage, India has produced relatively few startups building large foundation models. Instead, most investor capital has flowed toward application-layer companies, rather than the capital-intensive development of frontier models.

Ghose’s appointment also comes ahead of India’s AI Impact Summit 2026, scheduled for February, where the government is expected to bring together global technology leaders, startups, and policymakers to discuss the next phase of AI deployment. The summit is part of a broader effort by New Delhi to position India as a serious contender in the global AI landscape.

Anthropic is simultaneously expanding its local team, with job postings for roles including enterprise and startup account executives and a partner sales manager. The hires signal a push to strengthen go-to-market efforts and convert India’s growing usage into long-term enterprise and startup customers as the company builds out its presence in the country.