Indian Startup ChatGPT Scores: We Audited 10 Major Brands
We audited 10 major Indian startups using GeoIQ. Average score: 43/100. Zoho leads at 72/100. Unstop scores lowest at 18/100. The gap between visible and invisible brands comes down to three things: Crunchbase presence, robots.txt configuration, and third-party press coverage.
Why we did this
Indian founders ask us one question more than any other: how do Indian brands score compared to global ones? We ran live GeoIQ audits on 10 well-known Indian startups across fintech, SaaS, e-commerce, and consumer apps. These are real scores from real audits - not estimates.
The scores
| Brand | Category | AI Score | ChatGPT | Gemini | Perplexity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zoho | B2B SaaS | 72/100 | Strong | Strong | Strong |
| Freshdesk | B2B SaaS | 61/100 | Strong | Partial | Partial |
| OYO | Travel/Hospitality | 55/100 | Partial | Strong | Partial |
| Razorpay | Fintech | 54/100 | Partial | Partial | Partial |
| PhonePe | Fintech | 47/100 | Partial | Partial | Invisible |
| Groww | Fintech | 38/100 | Partial | Invisible | Partial |
| Meesho | E-commerce | 33/100 | Partial | Invisible | Invisible |
| MealCoreAI | FoodTech AI | 30/100 | Invisible | Invisible | Partial |
| Zepto | Quick Commerce | 22/100 | Invisible | Invisible | Invisible |
| Unstop | EdTech/Hiring | 18/100 | Invisible | Invisible | Invisible |
GeoIQ audit, June 2026. Average score across all 10 brands: 43/100.
Run a free GeoIQ audit and see how your brand compares to the Indian startups above. 60 seconds. No signup.
What separates the top from the bottom
Why Zoho scores 72: Zoho has 50+ years of combined content history, a Wikipedia page, a Crunchbase profile, G2 presence with thousands of reviews, coverage in every major tech publication, and consistent entity description across all platforms. Their robots.txt allows all AI crawlers. They have an llms.txt file. They are the benchmark for Indian B2B SaaS.
Why Unstop scores 18: Strong product, active user base, but almost zero AI citation infrastructure. No Wikipedia page. Incomplete Crunchbase profile. Limited press coverage in AI-indexed publications. Inconsistent brand description across platforms. GPTBot not explicitly allowed in robots.txt.
The pattern across all 10 brands:
Wikipedia or Crunchbase presence, multiple press mentions in indexed publications, AI crawlers allowed.
Missing entity footprint, sparse third-party mentions, often blocking AI crawlers without realising it.
The India-specific pattern
One finding stands out: Gemini scores Indian brands significantly higher than ChatGPT when coverage exists in Indian publications. Razorpay and Freshdesk both score higher on Gemini than ChatGPT - their YourStory, Inc42, and Economic Times coverage feeds directly into Google's knowledge graph which powers Gemini.
This is the India advantage: getting covered in DR70+ Indian publications moves Gemini scores faster than any other single action.
What any Indian startup can do this week
Get your baseline score across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and more. 60 seconds at geoiqai.com.
Allow GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, anthropic-ai, and Googlebot-Extended. If any of these are blocked, no other fix matters.
Go to crunchbase.com and fill in every field with a consistent brand description. This is the single highest-impact citation for ChatGPT visibility.
A plain text file at yourdomain.com/llms.txt with your brand name, description, key pages, and social profiles. Under 5% of Indian startups have done this.
This single action moves Gemini scores for Indian brands more than almost anything else. Submit your startup story to both publications.
Run a free GeoIQ audit and see how your brand compares to the Indian startups above. 60 seconds. No signup.
Frequently asked questions
ChatGPT's training data skews toward English-language global publications. Indian startups are underrepresented in Wikipedia, Crunchbase, and the US/UK tech press that dominates training datasets. Gemini is a better starting point for Indian brands - Google's index has stronger coverage of Indian publications like YourStory and Inc42 which feed directly into Gemini's knowledge graph.
Based on our dataset of 500+ brands, scores by stage: Pre-launch: 8/100 average. Early stage: 15-25/100. Growth stage: 30-50/100. Established: 50-70/100. Enterprise: 70+/100. Zoho at 72 is the Indian benchmark for what a mature B2B SaaS brand can achieve.
Technical fixes (robots.txt, llms.txt, schema) show Perplexity results within days. Getting covered in YourStory or Inc42 moves Gemini scores within 2-4 weeks of publication. ChatGPT improvements take longer as they depend on training cycles. Most Indian startups can realistically move from 20 to 40+ within 60 days with focused effort.
Gemini scores Indian brands 10-20 points higher on average than ChatGPT when coverage exists in Indian publications. This is because Gemini uses Google's live knowledge graph which has strong indexing of YourStory, Inc42, Economic Times, and NDTV Gadgets. These publications are less represented in ChatGPT's training data.