AI giants are racing to offer free access to their premium plans in India. Following Perplexity’s lead, OpenAI recently joined the trend—and now Google has entered the fray as well. The company announced a major partnership with Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom provider, to bring its cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) services to millions of Indian users at no cost. Under the collaboration, Jio subscribers will receive 18 months of complimentary access to Google’s Gemini AI Pro plan, a premium subscription valued at ₹35,100 (approximately $399).
The offering includes access to Gemini 2.5 Pro, the tech giant’s latest AI model capable of understanding and generating text, images, and video. The promotion will initially roll out to Jio 5G users aged 18 to 25, with plans to expand nationwide in the near future.
The move by Google, led by Sundar Pichai, appears to mirror strategies adopted by rivals Perplexity and OpenAI, both of which recently launched one-year free trials of their premium offerings—Perplexity Pro and ChatGPT Go, respectively. Perplexity’s plan, normally priced at around ₹17,000 annually, is being made available to Airtel’s 360 million subscribers as part of a separate deal. The landscape grows even more intriguing given Google’s significant stakes in India’s two largest telecom operators: a $4.5 billion investment (approximately 7.73%) in Jio Platforms and a $700 million stake (about 1.2%) in Bharti Airtel.
Through the Gemini AI Pro plan, users will gain access to Gemini 2.5 Pro via the Gemini app, NotebookLM (Google’s AI-powered research and writing assistant), and enhanced creative tools such as Veo 3.1 for video generation and Nano Banana for image creation. The package also includes 2TB of cloud storage across Google Drive, Gmail, and Photos, along with WhatsApp backup support on Android devices. According to Google, activation of the free AI subscription will be managed through the MyJio app.
Reliance intends to gradually extend the program to all Jio customers with active 5G data plans—potentially reaching tens of millions of users. Notably, with Jio’s subscriber base exceeding 450 million, this initiative is poised to become one of the largest consumer-facing AI service rollouts globally. The partnership also extends beyond individual users: Reliance’s AI arm, Reliance Intelligence Limited, will collaborate with Google Cloud to build advanced AI infrastructure in India. This will involve leveraging Google’s powerful Tensor Processing Units (TPUs)—specialized chips designed specifically for training and running large-scale AI models.
