There have been telecom partnerships before, most notably with OTT platforms like Netflix, Hotstar, and Amazon Prime. 

They’ve usually been bundled with postpaid plans, or sometimes with higher value prepaid topups. 

Nobody has ever gone to Airtel and said, “we want you to give our product away for free to all of your subscribers….yes, all 360 million of them…send us a quote.” 

The most intriguing aspect of the Perplexity-Airtel deal is the full-scale buyout of distribution.

Listen to Praveen Gopal Krishnan divulge on the importance of this kind of a deal in this edition of The Nutgraf.

You can also read the edition here: https://the-ken.com/the-nutgraf/perplexitys-audacity/

If you are a student who wants to participate in The Ken's case build competition, or if you simply want to read the case, you can do that here:

https://the-ken.com/case-competition-2025/