Google's Gemini app surpasses 450M monthly active users amid AI push in India
These figures were revealed by Shekar Khosla, the vice president of marketing and site lead at Google India, in a post on LinkedIn on Friday, July 25. 'The numbers say it all! @GeminiApp momentum is growing,' he said.
The increase in the Gemini app's MAU count comes weeks after Google announced that Indian students aged 18 years and above are eligible for free access to its premium AI Pro subscription plan, which otherwise costs Rs 19,500 per year. The student offer is valid until September 15, 2025.
As part of the subscription package, users get access to the latest AI models developed by the tech giant such as Gemini 2.5 Pro and Deep Research as well as its AI video generator, Veo 3. It also offers expanded access to AI tools such as Flow, Notebook LM, etc.
Google, at its I/O Connect India 2025 event held earlier this month, announced a slew of new initiatives and AI capabilities to assist the Indian developer and startup ecosystems. The company announced collaborations with three startups, Soket AI, Sarvam, and Gnani, to facilitate the development of sovereign foundational AI models under the IndiaAI mission.
With the Gemini app, Google is going head-to-head with OpenAI's ChatGPT app which is widely considered to be the dominant player in the AI chatbot landscape. The ChatGPT app is estimated to have around 600 million MAUs, according to court filings that were released in March this year.
The Gemini app still has some ground left to cover, but it is quickly gaining traction. Ahead of its annual I/O developer conference in May 2025, CEO Sundar Pichai had revealed that the Gemini AI app has more than 400 million MAUs.
While Gemini may be drawing away users from ChatGPT in the app space, OpenAI's popular AI chatbot poses a serious threat to Google's core search business. The Microsoft-backed startup recently said it receives 2.5 billion prompts from users around the world every day, with more than 300 million of those prompts coming from users in the US, according to a report by Axios.
Meanwhile, Perplexity has also emerged as a strong contender as well. Recently, it overtook ChatGPT to become the top app on Apple App Store in India. This development took place just a few days after the AI search startup, led by IIT Madras graduate Aravind Srinivas, announced free Perplexity Pro subscriptions for a year to eligible customers of Indian telco Bharti Airtel.
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