Perplexity Partners with Airtel to Expand AI Reach in India

Perplexity is going all-in on India! The AI search startup just teamed up with Airtel to give 360 million users a free 12-month Perplexity Pro plan (worth $200). This exclusive deal boosts its presence in a market where OpenAI still leads in numbers. Downloads in India surged 600% in Q2, and active users grew even faster. Perplexity’s earlier tie-up with Paytm and CEO Aravind Srinivas’ $1M India commitment show it’s serious about growth here. Though revenue lags behind ChatGPT, smart partnerships like this could help Perplexity win big in price-sensitive India.

Credit: TechCrunch

Zoho Unveils Zia LLM to Power Smarter AI for Businesses

Zoho has rolled out its own large language model, Zia LLM, built fully on NVIDIA’s AI tech. Announced at Zoholics India, the model is tailored for real business tasks like summarizing data, code generation, and smart retrieval. With three models (up to 7B parameters), it balances speed, cost, and performance. Unlike ChatGPT, Zia runs on Zoho’s own servers, ensuring better data privacy. It also introduced Hindi-English speech recognition, no-code AI agent tools, and over 25 pre-built Zia agents.

Credit: YourStory