Weeks before his SpaceX’s expected acquisition is finalizedAI coding startup Cursor is making its biggest push into India, launching its first country-specific subscription as the company bets on one of the world’s largest developer markets to drive its next stage of growth.
On Monday, the startup introduced Cursor Start, a ₹649 per month (around $7) subscription designed specifically for India — and priced much lower than Cursor. Standard Pro subscription of $20 per month.
The move reflects the growing importance of India to Cursor’s business. The startup says India is already its third-largest market globally and home to its highest concentration of power users, with its user base in the country more than tripling over the past year.
This scale, coupled with India’s vast pool of software engineering talent, made it the first market in which Cursor chose to localize its pricing, Simon Green, Cursor’s head of Asia Pacific and Japan, told TechCrunch. “We felt there was an opportunity here to right-size the business model and drive scale,” Green said. “The technical competence of the country and the engineering talent that already exists make it a completely natural choice. »
India has become one of the largest software development centers in the world. Earlier this year, GitHub said that the country has more than 27 million developers on its platform, second only to the United States, with more than two million people joining in 2026 alone.
Cursor Start includes access to Cursor’s Composer 2.5 template and Grok 4.5, with higher usage limits than the free tier, as well as cloud agents, its iOS app, plugins, template context protocol support, hooks, and skills. The startup said the plan is aimed at developers who need more AI-assisted coding capability than the free offerings without upgrading to its full Pro subscription.
The lower-priced plan aims to expand access rather than replace Cursor’s flagship offering, Green said. Unlike the $20 per month Pro subscription, Start doesn’t include access to frontier AI models from vendors like OpenAI and Anthropic, or advanced features like Bugbot, Auto Mode, Automations, and the Cursor SDK.
The plan is billed in Indian Rupees and supports payments through credit and debit cards as well as India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
Green told TechCrunch that Cursor would use several controls to ensure the India-only subscription is only available to individual users in the country, including measures to discourage people from accessing the plan through virtual private networks (VPNs).
Cursor is not the only one to adapt its prices to India. OpenAI and Anthropic have also deployed India-specific projects over the past year, as global AI companies compete for users in one of the world’s fastest-growing AI markets.
Although Cursor Start is initially limited to India, Green told TechCrunch that the startup could expand its localized pricing to other markets if the model proves successful.
“We will continue to do everything we can to fuel demand and serve the customers who use us,” Green said. “Now, if this model proves that we can expand it to other markets, maybe we will. But I think it would be crazy to say that we would never do it elsewhere.”
OpenAI provides precedent for this strategy, having launched its ChatGPT Go for less than $5 in India before extend the subscription at a lower price to other markets.
In addition to the localized pricing strategy, Cursor is also expanding its presence in India through new hires. Green told TechCrunch that the startup recently hired its first salesperson in India and expects another leader to join in Delhi. The company is also building its government affairs office, along with three customer technical support hires, as it expands its presence across Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai.
Cursor’s commercial rise is still in its early stages in India, Green said, where adoption has so far been largely driven by individual developers, startups and universities. He said Cursor sees significant opportunities in sectors such as banking and large corporations as it expands its local sales efforts.
Green said India-specific pricing was designed to be commercially sustainable rather than a loss leader. He said the cheaper plan is viable because it is built around Cursor’s own AI models, which result in lower operating costs than third-party frontier models.
Cursor’s expansion into India comes just over a month after Elon Musk’s SpaceX agreed to acquire the AI coding startup in a $60 billion all-stock deal, following SpaceX’s deal. successful IPO. The acquisition is expected to be completed in the third quarter. However, SpaceX has been in partnership with Cursor since April to develop next-generation “coding and knowledge working AI.”
Green said Cursor would continue to operate independently until the transaction closes and that the company’s expansion plans in India were already underway before the transaction. However, once the acquisition is finalized, Green said SpaceX’s existing presence in India through Starlink could help Cursor grow faster by lowering commercial and operational barriers.
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