Conversational artificial intelligence platform Perplexity plans to roll out a pro version of its AI platform for students in India free of charge.

During an online session with Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Perplexity Cofounder and CEO Aravind Srinivas said that Perplexity has set a goal that no student should pay for its Pro plan but it is difficult to go for mass market rollout.

“We are working with a student group on WhatsApp. We are aiming for close to a million sign-ups by mid-March. Our goal is to make sure that no student has to pay for a pro version of Perplexity anywhere in the world. If you put out a slogan where knowledge begins then you have to be serious about it. Knowledge matters most to the student. We want to bring it to India for students,” he said.

The free plan comes with limited functionality while the user of the paid plan adds image generation tools, unlimited file upload etc.

The advent of Chinese AI platform DeepSeek has triggered demand for making AI available at lower cost.

Indian developers had placed a similar demand for AI major OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during his visit early this month.

Mr Srinivas said that the company is working on lower than USD 20 subscription cost and also payment option through fintech firm Paytm.

“We are figuring out a way to make the pro plan widely accessible to everybody without them having to pay USD 20 equivalent… give us a few months, or even a few weeks, to figure it out. These things are moving really fast. I don’t want to give you a poor timeline here,” Mr Srinivas said.

Paytm has Perplexity’s AI on its platform but subscribers for premium features are required to pay in US dollars.

“The UPI or Paytm payment app, the fundamental model there is, we work around with the stripe APIs, and I think it’s pretty difficult to accept those kinds of payments right now. I hope we can figure our solution together pretty soon,” Mr Srinivas said in response to a question if the app can be subscribed through Paytm. He said that collaboration with Paytm can help users in different ways including checking about any entity they want to pay to.

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