Indian Startup Founders Ask Sam Altman For A Discount On ChatGPT
For applications to reach their full potential, they must be industry-specific—a key insight for many Indian startups building within the application layer from the discussion.
At a closed-door meeting with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Indian startup founders asked for cheaper pricing of the ChatGPT maker's products in the country. Snapdeal founder Kunal Bahl, who attended the meeting in Delhi on February 5, posted on X, “Interesting discussions in the closed-door meeting with Sam Altman and the @OpenAI team today in Delhi.”
Key Insights from the Meeting:
Bahl's first key takeaway was an acknowledgment that pricing is currently high and must drop significantly for widespread adoption, with potential future updates on the matter. Another takeaway was how ChatGPT becomes a key entry point for user information research. The plan is to avoid charging for external links (unlike Google), as they believe it could affect trust in the results. This has interesting implications for intent-based ad businesses like Google and the advertisers that rely heavily on them. Additionally, foundational models can only take things 80-90% of the way. To reach 100%, a strong application layer tailored to specific industries and company contexts will be essential.
Startups and researchers are the true hope for India in its mission to develop its indigenous AI model. In a conversation with the Union IT Minister, the OpenAI CEO said that India is the second-largest market for the AI major and should take the lead in driving AI innovation. Altman emphasised India's expanding role in AI innovation, noting that developers are actively creating tools built on ChatGPT. He stressed that AI models are on the verge of transformative applications, suggesting that AI-powered tutors and medical diagnosis tools could become a reality if developers actively build solutions using OpenAI’s technology.
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