Uber India Head Prabhjeet Singh Joins OpenAI as India MD

Prabhjeet Singh, Uber’s India head, has quit the ride-hailing company after an 11-year stint to join ChatGPT maker OpenAI as its managing director in the country. Singh announced his decision to leave Uber in an email to employees on Friday.

He will join OpenAI in September, the artificial intelligence company said in a statement.

"Prabhjeet will be OpenAI's most senior leader in India, with responsibility for our performance across consumer growth, enterprise adoption and partnerships, regulatory engagement and operations," the statement added. India is one of the largest markets of ChatGPT in terms of weekly active users and is a top-five country for users of its application programming interface.

"His focus will include building partnerships and supporting India's wider AI ecosystem, while helping more consumers, businesses, institutions and government bodies benefit from AI," the statement said. Singh will report to OpenAI's Asia Pacific MD Kiran Mani, who joined the company earlier this year from JioHotstar.

Singh's appointment as OpenAI's India head comes just six months after rival Anthropic roped in Microsoft veteran Irina Ghose to lead its operations in the country.

Over the past year, OpenAI has been making a broader push to expand its international footprint. Since opening its Tokyo office in April 2024, OpenAI has established a growing presence across the region, including offices in Singapore, Australia, Korea, and India. The company is also increasingly partnering with enterprises and organisations across APAC to deploy AI tools at scale and integrate advanced models into products and services.

Also Read: OpenAI plans new offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru

Uber India exit

“Over the past few weeks, I made the difficult decision to leave Uber to pursue an opportunity in frontier technology. It wasn’t a decision to leave Uber as much as it was a decision to run toward something I couldn’t ignore,” Singh wrote in his email to Uber India employees.

ET has seen a copy of the email.

An Uber spokesperson confirmed the development. “We thank Prabhjeet for his leadership and lasting contributions during his decade-long journey with Uber. We remain deeply committed to our next phase of growth in India,” an Uber India spokesperson said in response to ET's queries.

Uber hasn’t named a successor for Singh.

India is Uber’s third-largest market globally by trip volumes, and in a May interview with ET, the company’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi had said it was on track to become the largest.

Singh joined Uber India in 2015 as general manager and head of strategy. He was elevated to the role of president for India and South Asia in 2020.

He did not respond to ET’s queries until the time of publication.

In his email, Singh wrote: “Our business has real momentum. We are growing faster than ever, adding more riders and earners each month than at any point in our history. We have exceptional leadership alignment, an outstanding team, differentiated advantages in the market and a pipeline of new bets that will shape our next decade".

India ride-hailing market

Singh succeeded Pradeep Parameswaran, who is currently Uber’s global head of mobility, as Uber India head in July 2020. At the time, Uber and other ride-hailing firms were grappling with the impact of Covid-19 lockdowns, which had wiped out nearly 90% of demand.

Under Singh’s leadership, Uber doubled down on premium and higher-ticket offerings, launching services such as Uber Black, rentals, intercity rides and business-to-business logistics.

The company also faced increasing competition from rivals such as Rapido and the now-defunct EV ride-hailing startup BluSmart. To counter BluSmart’s growing appeal among premium users, Uber launched its electric mobility service, Uber Green, in 2023.

After the pandemic, Rapido expanded beyond bike taxis into four-wheeler ride hailing with its zero-commission model for drivers. The move forced Uber and Ola to rethink their long-standing commission-based model, prompting both companies to gradually shift toward subscription- and SaaS-based pricing for drivers in several cities.

While Ola ceded market share in the four-wheeler ride-hailing segment to Rapido, Uber has retained a 45-50% share of the market, according to industry executives.

In fiscal 2025, Uber India reported revenue of Rs 3,849 crore, up 2.3% from a year earlier, reflecting a sharp slowdown in growth even as its losses widened significantly.

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