In a bid to pay back his alma mater and generate more product awareness among India’s innovative youth, Aravind Srinivas, co-founder of Artficial Intelligence (AI) search engine Perplexity, has given free Perplexity Pro access to all the students, faculty, and staff of IIT-Madras (IIT-M).

Perplexity Pro is the company’s premium subscription plan, giving access to a variety of advanced AI models and is priced around $20 per month. Estimates suggest that almost 12,000 free licenses would have been offered to IIT-M.

“We’ve given free Perplexity Pro to all students and faculty and staff of IIT Madras, where I did my undergraduation. Super excited to start there as we begin our expansion for Indian campuses,” Srinivas said in a post on X.

The post hints that this is also a way for Perplexity to get more people to experience its products in India, which has a large addressable market for AI-powered tools given its young knowledge base.

Perplexity has also set in motion its India expansion, as recently indicated by Srinivas in a hiring post on LinkedIn. He shared that the company is looking to recruit someone to help expand its presence in India, and the role involves travel and meeting with strategic partners in a fast-paced, start-up environment.

Srinivas attended school in Chennai and received his undergraduate engineering degree at IIT-Madras. Founded in 2022 by Srinivas, Andy Konwinski, Denis Yarats, and Johnny Ho, Perplexity’s valuation had grown rapidly to touch almost $9 billion as of December 2024, when it raised a $500 million round. Its investors include Jeff Bezos, Andrej Karpathy, Susan Wojcicki, Elad Gil, Naval Ravikant, and institutional investors.

An internal mail sent to students and staff by the institute’s director noted: “IIT Madras is partnering with Perplexity to provide free Perplexity Pro to all students and faculty. Perplexity combines real-time internet search with large language models to deliver detailed answers backed by trusted sources. Students around the world use Perplexity to kickstart their research, find high quality sources in seconds, and study for exams.” IIT Madras also thanked Srinivas for the generous gesture as part of the note.

“Wonderful gesture @AravSrinivas for @iitmadras!! I am sure that we will put this to great use! You will expand your presence in India in no time! Not just in campuses,” B Ravindran, IIT-M professor and Head of Wadhwani School of Data Science and AI, said in a post on X.

He added that Perplexity Pro allows users to carry out search using not just a single AI model, but multiple advanced models, such as GPT-4, Claude, and even Perplexity’s own model and making it valuable for students and faculty, each with its own unique strengths.

Srinivas said, “Knowledge is power, and one of its most powerful things is that it is available to anyone who wants to achieve it. AI native search is changing how future generations learn and consume information online, and it is an honour to make Perplexity Pro available to all students at my alma mater. IIT-M has significantly shaped the person I am today. With this collaboration, I am optimistic about how the future generation will build remarkable AI products and models globally and in India.”