(April 12, 2025) When Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, touched down in India in February 2025, his message was catalytic. “India should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution,” Altman remarked. The numbers appear to agree. According to Altman, India is now OpenAI’s second-largest market globally, with its user base tripling in just one year. From students and coders to startups and enterprise users, the country is embracing AI tools like ChatGPT, Whisper, and DALL·E with unprecedented speed.
Altman’s trip reflected real strategic intent. He met with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw to explore India’s ambitious vision for a low-cost AI ecosystem and praised the country’s rapid adoption of generative AI and its burgeoning developer community. It marked a significant reversal from 2023, when Altman had expressed skepticism about India’s capacity to build large AI models.
That pivot aligns with another key moment: OpenAI’s decision to hire Pragya Misra as its first official in India last year. Her appointment signaled OpenAI’s deepening commitment to engaging with India’s government, civil society, and tech ecosystem. A former national-level amateur golfer and the voice behind the Pragyaan podcast, Pragya brings a unique blend of discipline, reflection, and strategic thinking to her role as the Public Policy Head at OpenAI. Since her appointment, she has since become the company’s public face in India, working at the critical intersection of policy, technology, and human values.
Pragya Misra with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during the latter’s visit to India in February 2025
From WhatsApp to OpenAI: First hire of India at both
What does it take to build bridges between some of the most powerful tech companies in the world and a billion-strong democracy like India? In Pragya Misra’s case, it takes a mind sharpened by negotiation, a calm nurtured by meditation, and the strategic instincts honed on golf courses and in boardrooms. She’s not just the first employee for OpenAI in India, she was also the first hire for WhatsApp in the country. This symmetry speaks volumes about how global tech giants see her: a thoughtful, agile leader who understands the pulse of India and the promise of innovation.
Her story is all about confident leaps in all spheres of life. From representing India internationally as a junior golf champion to co-founding a tech start-up, from crafting WhatsApp’s India narrative to leading public affairs at Truecaller, and now shaping AI policy and partnerships for OpenAI, Pragya’s journey is full of interesting twists and turns.
Today, she splits her time between OpenAI’s headquarters in San Francisco and India, functioning as a vital conduit, translating the complexities of India’s digital ecosystem to her colleagues in the Valley, and channeling OpenAI’s vision into forms that resonate across Indian society.
Driving AI in India
Pragya’s role at OpenAI is steeped in responsibility and vision.
We are eager to contribute to India’s AI Mission by collaborating with developers, users, academics, civil society, and policymakers to harness AI’s potential to unlock societal benefit for Bharat.
Pragya Misra
With India as OpenAI’s second-largest user base, her job is to ensure that the technology is not just used, but understood, shaped, and shared for the public good.
Pragya Misra
Her impact is already visible. When Indian developers raised concerns about tokenisation costs and language barriers, Pragya helped relay this feedback to OpenAI’s product teams, leading to significant model optimisations. “I’m that conduit making sure our folks in SF understand the excitement and challenges of AI adoption in India,” she shared.
She was also instrumental in launching ChatGPT on WhatsApp. “My past and present converge!” she wrote. This wasn’t just a poetic turn of phrase. It was a full-circle moment that saw her earlier work with WhatsApp now complement her current mission at OpenAI.
Her approach to AI is refreshingly grounded. For her, it’s not just about scale, rather it’s about access.
Artificial intelligence will drive profound societal advancement, with applications spanning various industries and addressing global challenges that humanity has struggled with.
Pragya Misra
She sees AI as a tool to democratize intelligence, especially through voice-first interfaces crucial in a country as linguistically diverse as India.
One such initiative is Farmer.Chat, developed by Digital Green using GPT-4. In field trials across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, it was women who emerged as the primary users, thanks to its local language support and voice-enabled interface. “This technology becomes far more inclusive in both use and societal benefit,” Pragya remarked.
View this post on Instagram
From WhatsApp to Truecaller: Building trust in tech
Before OpenAI, Pragya Misra served as Director of Public Affairs at Truecaller, where she built strong partnerships with government ministries, law enforcement agencies, and civil society to enhance digital safety. Her work there reinforced her belief that policy-making must be informed by public interest, not just corporate goals.
But it was at WhatsApp that her ability to build trust and clarity truly flourished. As the first employee in India, she managed policy and communication during turbulent times like misinformation crises, privacy debates, and product rollouts like WhatsApp Payments. “I was a trusted partner, liaison, and interlocutor between the local and global teams,” she recalls. Her strategy helped double WhatsApp’s user base in India, growing from 300 to 600 million.
She didn’t just manage communications, rather she shaped them. From forging partnerships to running civic engagement campaigns, Pragya ensured that WhatsApp remained not just relevant, but respected.
The corporate hustle and a brief entrepreneurial stint
Long before she was decoding the ethics of AI, Pragya was navigating business models. She co-founded MBA-Infosoft Pvt. Ltd., a tech startup that provided ERP and consulting solutions for SMEs in retail, education, and hospitality. Though it was a short-lived chapter, it gave her first-hand insight into the challenges entrepreneurs face in India.
Pragya Misra
Her corporate career began at Ernst & Young, where she handled key accounts across infrastructure and consumer sectors building her foundation in stakeholder management and strategic thinking.
Academically, she is no less accomplished. A commerce graduate from Delhi University, she went on to earn an MBA from the International Management Institute, New Delhi in 2012, and later added a diploma in Bargaining and Negotiations from the London School of Economics.
Her persona is a blend of precision and empathy, shaped equally by her stint in competitive sports and her identity as a heartfulness meditation trainer. Her Pragyaan podcast explores the questions most people shy away from: What is consciousness? Can technology deepen human awareness? What role does balance play in high-performance environments?
The golfing groundwork
Pragya’s high-flying journey started on the greens. Between 1998 and 2007, she was consistently ranked among the top three amateur golfers in India and represented the country in various international tournaments. The game taught her more than technique. It gave her perspective.
“Sports trained me to think under pressure and make decisions swiftly,” she once noted. It’s a mindset that echoes in her career: focused, strategic, and unafraid of complexity.
Inner Clarity: Pragyaan podcast and meditation
While people know her for her policy work, Pragya’s personal practice of heartfulness meditation and her Pragyaan podcast reveal another dimension. She explores ideas that sit at the intersection of science, spirituality, and personal growth, creating space for reflection in an industry obsessed with acceleration.
AI can help you find your own version of balance. I use it for repetitive work like planning meals or booking holidays, which makes everything smoother and unlocks time I can use to meditate, get fitter, or do other things important for personal fulfillment while handling a demanding role at OpenAI.
Pragya Misra mentioned in an interview with Business World
In a world where burnout is worn like a badge of honour, Pragya’s philosophy is radically human. Technology, she believes, should not just work for us, it should also make us more whole.
The face of India’s AI future
As OpenAI’s presence grows in India with the second-largest user base globally, Pragya Misra’s role becomes increasingly pivotal. She is not just shaping public policy, rather shaping how India experiences and influences the evolution of AI.
“More women need to participate in the AI conversation,” she urges. “Women bring unique perspectives to problems. Now with AI available on our phones, we can build, test, and solve without technical barriers.”
In many ways, Pragya represents a new kind of leadership, one that blends execution with empathy, strategy with spirit, and ambition with accessibility. Whether she is briefing Sam Altman or guiding a meditation session, her intent remains the same: to unlock human potential, in all its complexity.
