Anthropic opened its first India office in Bengaluru on February 16, 2026, timed to coincide with the India AI Impact Summit. The announcement came with a notable statistic: India is now Claude’s second-largest market globally, trailing only the United States.
The new office at Embassy Golf Links Tech Park is Anthropic’s second in Asia after Tokyo. Irina Ghose, newly appointed as Managing Director of India, will lead operations focused on enterprise customers, startups, and government collaborations.
What the Numbers Show
The usage patterns in India tell an interesting story. According to Anthropic’s Economic Index Report, nearly 50% of Claude usage in India comprises computer and mathematical tasks - mobile UI development, web app debugging, and similar technical work. That’s a notably higher concentration of coding-related use compared to global averages.
Educational tasks account for 12% of Claude.ai usage in India. The company’s run-rate revenue in the country has doubled since they announced expansion plans in October 2025.
Major Partnership Announcements
Anthropic rolled out a batch of partnerships aimed at demonstrating both commercial viability and social impact:
Enterprise deals:
- Air India is using Claude Code for software development
- CRED reports 2x faster feature delivery and 10% improved test coverage
- Cognizant is deploying Claude to 350,000 employees globally
- Razorpay is integrating Claude into risk systems and operations
Startup customers:
- Enterpret powers its AI assistant with Claude
- Emergent reached $25 million in annual recurring revenue and 2 million users in under five months using Claude
Social impact initiatives:
- Pratham, one of India’s largest education nonprofits, is piloting an “Anytime Testing Machine” with 1,500 students across 20 schools, with plans to expand to 100 schools by year’s end
- EkStep Foundation partnership for agriculture and digital infrastructure
- Adalat AI launching a WhatsApp helpline for judicial services
Indic Language Support
A practical requirement for the Indian market: working in languages other than English. Anthropic says it has developed training data in ten Indian languages - Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, and Urdu. They’re partnering with Karya and the Collective Intelligence Project on multilingual evaluations.
The Bigger Picture
The timing is strategic. India’s AI Impact Summit has drawn every major AI lab and tech CEO to New Delhi, all competing for attention in what’s become the next major AI market. OpenAI revealed that India accounts for over 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users - also second only to the US. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have collectively committed $68 billion in AI and cloud infrastructure investment in India through 2030.
Anthropic’s India move is notable for what it emphasizes: partnerships with local players rather than just market entry. The enterprise customers like Air India and CRED are domestic success stories. The nonprofit collaborations focus on distinctly Indian problems - agricultural extension, judicial access, vernacular education.
“India represents one of the world’s most promising opportunities to bring the benefits of responsible AI to vastly more people and enterprises,” Ghose said in the announcement.
For a company that’s positioned itself around AI safety, the India expansion also represents a test of whether responsible AI development translates across different regulatory and cultural contexts. The competition is fierce, the market is massive, and the stakes for getting enterprise AI right are higher than ever.