Weeks before its long-awaited acquisition by SpaceX closes, AI coding startup Cursor is making its biggest push into India yet, launching its first country-specific subscription as the company bets on one of the world’s largest developer markets to fuel its next stage of growth.

On Monday, the startup introduced Cursor Start, a ₹649 a month (around $7) subscription built specifically for India and priced well below Cursor’s standard Pro subscription of $20 a 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 largest concentration of power users, with its user base in the country more than tripling over the past year.

That scale, along with India’s deep pool of software engineering talent, made it the first market where Cursor chose to localize pricing, Simon Green, Cursor’s Asia-Pacific and Japan director, told TechCrunch. “We felt like we had an opportunity there to right-size the business model and drive scale,” Green said. “The country’s technical competence and the engineering talent that already exists make it a very natural choice.”

India has become one of the largest software development centers in the world. Earlier this year, GitHub said the country has more than 27 million developers on its platform, second only to the United States, and more than two million will join in 2026 alone.

Cursor Start includes access to Cursor’s Model Composer 2.5 and Grok 4.5, with higher usage limits than the free tier, along with cloud agents, your iOS app, plugins, Model Context Protocol support, hooks, and skills. The startup said the plan is aimed at developers who need more AI-assisted coding capability than what the free tier offers without upgrading to its full Pro subscription.

The lower-priced plan is intended to expand access rather than replace Cursor’s flagship offering, Green said. Unlike the $20/month Pro subscription, Start doesn’t include access to cutting-edge AI models from vendors like OpenAI and Anthropic, or advanced features including Bugbot, Auto Mode, Automations, and Cursor SDK.

The plan is billed in Indian rupees and supports payments via credit and debit cards as well as through India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

Green told TechCrunch that Cursor would use multiple controls to ensure the India-only subscription is available only 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 that adapts its prices to India. OpenAI and Anthropic have also rolled out India-specific plans over the past year as global AI companies compete for users in one of the world’s fastest-growing AI markets.

While Cursor Start is initially limited to India, Green told TechCrunch that the startup could expand localized pricing to other markets if the model is successful.

“We will continue to do everything we can to drive demand and serve the customers who use us,” Green said. “Now, if this model proves that we can take it to other markets, maybe we will. But I think it would be crazy to say we would never do it in other markets.”

OpenAI provides a precedent for this strategy, having launched its sub-$5 ChatGPT Go in India before expanding the lower-priced subscription 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 a government affairs office, along with three technical customer service hires, as it expands its presence in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

Cursor’s business push is still in its early stages in India, Green said, where adoption so far has largely been driven by individual developers, startups and universities. He said Cursor sees significant opportunities in sectors including banking and large enterprises as it expands its local sales efforts.

Green said the India-specific price was designed to be commercially sustainable rather than loss-making. He said the lower-priced plan is viable because it relies on Cursor’s own AI models, which carry lower operating costs than relying primarily on third-party frontier models.

Cursor’s expansion in India comes just over a month after Elon Musk’s SpaceX agreed to acquire the AI ​​coding startup in an all-stock deal worth $60 billion, following SpaceX’s successful initial public offering. The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter. However, SpaceX has partnered with Cursor since April to develop a next-generation “coding and knowledge working AI.”

Green said Cursor will continue to operate independently until the transaction closes and that the company’s expansion plans in India were already underway before the deal. However, once the acquisition closes, Green said SpaceX’s existing presence in India through Starlink could help Cursor expand faster by reducing commercial and operational barriers.