OpenAI appoints Uber Veteran Prabhjeet Singh as the new India Managing Director

OpenAI is aggressively expanding its leadership footprint in Asia, appointing former Uber India head Prabhjeet Singh as its first Managing Director for India. Singh steps into the role after an impressive 11-year tenure at the ride-hailing giant, where he most recently served as President of Uber India and South Asia.

Prior to his time at Uber, which began in 2015, Singh was an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company. He holds alumni status from both IIT Kharagpur and IIM Ahmedabad.

As OpenAI’s senior-most executive in the region, Singh will directly oversee consumer growth, enterprise API adoption, and localized strategic partnerships. This executive placement highlights a few shifting dynamics in the global AI race:

• India is actively shaping its own unique AI regulations, data policies, and digital public infrastructure. Singh’s deep experience navigating India’s complex regulatory and digital payment landscape while scaling Uber makes him uniquely suited to manage OpenAI’s local compliance and government relations.

• India has emerged as OpenAI’s second-largest global market. The company is heavily investing in the region, establishing a New Delhi headquarters alongside planned offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru, backed by a massive 100-megawatt data center collaboration with the Tata Group.

• The appointment signals a heating talent war among US AI labs. It closely follows Anthropic’s parallel hiring of Irina Ghose, former Managing Director of Microsoft India, to lead its own Indian operations.

The leadership comes alongside a product and safety update. OpenAI is set to launch GPT5.6 Sol with strengthened real-time protections against high-risk cyber activity and repeated misuse. As OpenAI courts enterprise and government customers, having local leadership to drive partnerships and compliance becomes critical, especially when India decides its own AI regulation and data policy. Singh’s experience scaling Uber India through regulatory complexity and consumer scale will be relevant as OpenAI navigates a similar landscape. 

Muskan Singh