AI startup OpenAI has appointed Raghav Gupta, the former Asia Pacific Managing Director at Coursera, as the head of its education vertical for India and APAC.

This comes after OpenAI announced last week that it will launch its first office in India in New Delhi, underlining the ChatGPT maker's focus to deepen its presence in its second largest market after the US.

The appointment of Gupta was announced by OpenAI's vice president and general manager for education Leah Belsky in New Delhi. Belsky herself had previously worked at Coursera in various capacities for nine year.

Gupta, who had joined Coursera in 2017 as Director, had stepped down from the company earlier in March this year. He was serving as Managing Director at Coursera from 2019, per his LinkedIn profile.

The ChatGPT maker also announced the launch of OpenAI learning accelerator in India. The accelerator has been rolled out in partnership with IIT Madras, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Ministry of Education. 

OpenAI's India push comes at a time when AI adoption is increasing at a fast clip.

According to a Sensor Tower report recently, Asia emerged as the top market for Generative AI downloads like ChatGPT driven by the rapid adoption in regions like India and China Mainland.

Generative AI apps downloads in Asia in January-June this year grew over 175% to 684 million as compared to 247 million in the same period last year.