Who doesn’t like freebies–and in today’s economy? 

In July 2025, Bharti Airtel announced that all of its active users—mobile and broadband—could unlock a yearlong free pass to Perpexity Pro. That’s worth approx. ₹17,000.

Months later, in October, Google partnered with Reliance Jio to offer Jio’s Unlimited 5G users 18 months of free access to Gemini Pro (now with Gemini 3 included). That’s worth ₹35,100. 

Both out of pocket. Not cheap giveaways.

OpenAI joined the party in November, doling out free ChatGPT Go subscriptions to millions of Indian users.

But training large language models (LLM) is pretty expensive, and running them is even more so.

Then why are these Big AI companies, which are yet to mint profits, giving this VIP treatment to Indians? Is distribution really that important?

The Freemium Gold Rush: Strategy, not Generosity 

First of all, do NOT even consider this a charity of some sort. The intention behind these moves is a carefully built business plan to grab the bigger pie of India’s digital user base—one of the largest and fastest-growing across continents.

The Power of A Near-Billion User Base

It’s simple mathematics. India is a massive market. And AI needs users. The country currently houses over 95 crore (950 million) Internet users, a number that’s growing at 8% year on year (y-o-y). Not to mention, people here enjoy some of the cheapest Internet plans worldwide. 

A major chunk of India’s digital population comprises twenty and thirty-somethings. The age group that lives, works, and socializes online. As such, India offers a perfect environment for testing and scaling AI services.

Indians Just Love Freebies: History Rhymes

Remember how Jio shook India’s telecom market in 2016 by offering customers about 6 months of free 4G data and voice services? Big AI companies are rolling a similar dice. They know that Indians are price-conscious. Whenever they get a whiff of discounts from any store, they flock to that store without thinking twice. 

In a similar vein, offering free, easy access to Gen AI tools opens the door for millions of users here. 

How? Either by joining hands with telecom giants and bundling their Gen AI tools with the Internet plans you already use (like Jio-Gemini and Airtel-Perplexity) or simply removing the paywall for a limited time (like ChatGPT).

As such, the Big AI companies don’t need to convince everyone to sign up for their LLM apps one by one. This is the fastest way to bring the product within the fingertips of the masses. 

Free Now, Pay Later: A Gateway to Mass Sign-ups

The Big AI companies are making these calculated investments as a long-term bet on India’s promising digital future. The idea is to get Indians hooked onto Gen AI before asking them to pay for it once the free period ends. Because it will end.

But why not China, an even bigger market? Well, China does have more Internet users than India, but its heavily regulated tech ecosystem limits foreign access. India, fortunately, welcomes foreign tech companies with open arms, and Big AI is pouncing on the opportunity to lock in millions of users here to train their LLMs.

So, what happens after the free trial ends? Of course, Big AI will unlikely slap users with expensive subscriptions but can rather offer low-cost, value-laced plans. Similar to how Jio went for the kill after it got the nation hooked to its network in 2016. 

But then many users will shy away from renewing their subscriptions. They’ll either wait for alternatives to show up or sneak out ways to continue the free trials—using a different mobile number or email ID. The “Great Indian Jugaad,” as we proudly say with a smirk on our faces.

Still, India’s sheer volumes offer huge promise. Even if 5-6% of users nod to pay for subscriptions, let’s say, that’ll still bring a respectable revenue.

Train the Gen AI Brain: The Real Scoop

India’s real strength lies in its incredible diversity. 121 distinct languages and thousands of dialects. We are a “masala mix” of ethnicities, languages, mindsets, and cultures. 

When an Indian user enters a prompt into a Gen AI tool, it could be in English, Hindi, Bengali, or even Hinglish (“Bhai, give me some quirky one-liners on Holi”). The question could come from a college student in Tamil Nadu or a grocery store owner in Rajasthan. 

Every such valuable interaction enriches the datasets, which makes these LLMs better understand local behaviors and cultural nuances and become more accurate, inclusive, and reflective of diverse perspectives. The more unique and raw data AI companies get, the smarter their LLMs will become. 

Actually, the heart of these Gen AI systems lies in the interaction layer: getting prompts from users. They analyze usage patterns, error correction, what people ask for and how they do it, what media they upload, and how the model functions across contexts. 

That’s the data goldmine that AI companies are digging to refine future versions of their LLMs for Indians and people around the world. For them, training Gen AI systems on data generated by Indian users is a critical stress test that will help them iron out complex communication patterns.

In a nutshell, if a Gen AI tool can work well in India, it can work well anywhere.

The Plan Has Worked Already

These moves by Big AI have done wonders so far. 

Following its limited-time offer, ChatGPT’s daily active users (DAU) in India soared 607% y-o-y to 73 million during mid-Dec 2025. This number has further clocked 100 million in Feb 2026.

Gemini and Perplexity also tasted a similar success. Gemini’s DAU in India rose by 15% since its deal with Reliance Jio kicked off. Similarly, Perplexity quickly hit the top spot in the iOS App Store in India right after partnering with Airtel. Moreover, India now makes up for over a third of the San Francisco-based AI startup’s global DAU (as of 2025), a considerable leap from 7% in 2024.

On Route to Becoming the Global Bot Training Capital 

India’s AI market will likely clock US$17 Bn by 2027, riding on the triple forces 

of digital fluency, youth, and rapid adoption. Big AI players aren’t just building a user base; they’re building a data and cognition infrastructure trained and run by human emotions at a national scale. They’re betting on a market that promises unmatched scale, diversity, and ROI over the long term. 

Right now, India is that race track where the Big AI players are toiling hard to outpace each other. Whoever crosses the finish line first on the Indian track might just win anywhere in the world. Time is supreme.

Rapido has already hogged the news headlines with its food delivery venture, “Ownly,” aiming to challenge the Zomato-Swiggy duopoly.

With a pilot launching in Bengaluru soon, Rapido’s Ownly is luring in restaurants and consumers with two key value propositions: a flat-fee structure and transparent meal pricing.

This hints at a potential shake-up. But is it a walk in the park or a walk into the storm? Why has no other player been able to pull this venture off successfully yet?

In this article, I’ve answered these questions by explaining what’s driving Rapido Ownly’s proposed model and what roadblocks it can stumble upon.

Read the analysis!

Firstly, Why Earlier Ride-Hailing Biz Failed?

Before Rapido, Ola and Uber attempted to shake the Swiggy-Zomato duopoly with Ola Café (acquired Foodpanda India later) and Uber Eats India, respectively. Additionally, Amazon Food and the government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) faced the same fate.

Ola Café, Amazon Food, and Uber Eats India fizzled out within a few years, with Zomato buying out the latter.

Most of these haven’t been able to grow due to limited restaurant selection, inefficient last-mile logistics, bad customer experience, and operational complexities.

While Ola has partnered with ONDC—its food delivery service “Ola Dash” now runs on the ONDC platform—it’s yet to match the success of Zomato and Swiggy.

The Rapido Advantage

Restaurant-Friendly Three-Tier Pricing Structure

Rapido has categorized its delivery fees into three distinct layers:

• Order value over ₹400: Flat delivery fee of ₹59 (₹50 + 18% GST) to be paid by partner restaurants.
• Order value ₹100-400: Flat delivery fee of ₹29.50 (₹25 + 18% GST) to be paid by partner restaurants.
• Order value below ₹100: Cross-subsidizing—partner restaurants will pay ₹11.80 (₹10 + 18% GST), customers will pay ₹23.60 (₹20 + 18% GST).

Now, let’s compare this flat-fee model to Zomato-Swiggy’s commission-based one.

Firstly, these two incumbents charge customers an additional platform fee of ₹10/order, which, with GST, totals ₹11.80.

Then, they extract 16-30% take rates of the order value. For example, a ₹500 food order on Swiggy or Zomato may attract ₹80-150 from partner restaurants. Rapido’s delivery fee will stay at ₹59.

The difference narrows on a ₹300 food order, with Zomato- or Swiggy-partnered restaurateurs footing ₹48-90. Rapido will charge ₹29.50 for the same order value.

Strong Last-Mile Delivery Backbone

Rapido boasts a ~40-lakh rider network (captains) that completes 6 crore monthly rides and over 30 lakh daily rides—a major credit goes to the two-wheelers (2W).

The ride-hailing unicorn plans to smartly redirect idle rider time to food delivery without fresh capital expenditure (CapEx). Moreover, the existing logistics infrastructure can speed up rollouts in new pin codes and potentially reduce delivery times in jam-packed urban areas.

As a sweetener, Rapido can expand its restaurant pool by targeting lower AOV eateries in tier 2 and 3 cities. These restaurants haven’t been profitable for Swiggy and Zomato.

Furthermore, Rapido’s previous experience with ONDC in food delivery works in its favor. Riders’ income will likely shoot as order volume increases. A dedicated captain’s app will loop ride, parcel, and food delivery orders into a single platform, with intelligent algorithms assigning jobs to maximize earnings and minimize travel distance.

The Cross-Sell Edge

Thanks to its massive ride-hailing user base, Rapido doesn’t need to splurge cash on bringing in new users to its food delivery app, Ownly. Instead, it can cross-sell to its existing customers by promoting Ownly within its own framework—in-app banners, SMS, and emails. Moreover, people with positive ride experiences will more likely give Ownly a test drive.

This means minimal-to-zero burning of millions on ads, influencer marketing, or discount wars to lure first-timers.

The result? Lower customer acquisition cost (CAC) and higher customer lifetime value (CLV).

But There’s A Flip Side To That Coin

Pricing Edge Wanes For Sub-100 INR Orders

When it comes to the delivery fee, Rapido trumps Zomato and Swiggy for food orders totaling at least ₹100. But for orders under ₹100, let’s say ₹70, Rapido loses its edge to the established players.

Let’s see how.

• Rapido: Combined fee of ₹35.40
• Zomato & Swiggy: ₹11-21 commission

At the lowest order tiers, the incumbents come out as the winners.

Signing Up Lakhs of Restaurants is a Steep Trek

Food delivery is operationally challenging, with only 10% of India’s gross order value (GOV) coming from organized quick-service restaurants (QSR) and the remaining from smaller eateries. So, Rapido Ownly must onboard thousands of mom-and-pop restaurants to scale up.

That’s an operational and logistical nightmare in a fragmented market.

Plus, on the supply side, Zomato and Swiggy have a firmer grip than their challengers. As of Q4 FY25, the Deepinder Goyal-led food delivery platform hosted about 314,000 monthly restaurant partners, followed by Swiggy’s 252,000.

This gives the two giants a clear edge in terms of scale and reach. For a newcomer like Rapido Ownly, inking deals with about 3 lakh restaurants to build supply is an enormous hurdle to jump over.

Shallow Profit Margins

In India, the AOV is ₹350–500, attracting ₹50–70 pre-order delivery costs. Rapido’s proposed take rates would hurt its profitability and, consequently, leave zero scope for further expansion and operational expenses (OpEx).

Rapido is still in the red and burns $4-5 Mn cash every month. So, potential low margins and bleak reinvestments in operations and expansions threaten an increased cash burn as it ventures into online food delivery.

Zomato, for instance, has priced meals 30-35% higher than dine-in rates on average. This makes its total customer costs, including delivery and platform charges, among the highest across continents.

Still, Zomato doesn’t enjoy the gravy train. It earns a flat 4.4% EBITDA, showing how thin profit margins already are, even at scale.

Therefore, Rapido Ownly will feel the pressure to increase take rates from partner restaurants, which can dilute its initial advantage.

Keeping Customers Happy Won’t Be That Easy

Zomato and Swiggy are doubling down on superfast food delivery with platforms, Bolt and Quick, respectively, to bring down delivery time to below 30 minutes. Both the giants are aiming for even faster food delivery.

Rapido’s riders will have to serve two high-priority demand segments—passengers and consumers—if it sticks to using its existing fleet. The mobility company needs to carve out a dedicated rider fleet to soak up the high-pressure, sub-30-minute food delivery. Else, the food might reach customers late due to rider allocation complexities, thus frustrating them.

So, while ₹25-50 per food order sounds great for restaurateurs, will customers switch for (slightly) affordable meals if delivery isn’t that fast?

Furthermore, Swiggy and Zomato have earned loyal customers through discounts, loyalty programs, and their respective quick-commerce services like Instamart and Blinkit. Rapido Ownly’s “earned visibility” model, where restaurant ratings precede paid ads, may not compete against incumbents’ aggressive marketing.

Zomato-Swiggy Won’t Just Sit and Watch

Zomato and Swiggy have already poured $2–3 Bn into building robust food delivery infrastructure. They now boast deep restaurant networks, strong and loyal customer bases, and a brand image that won’t fade anytime soon.

Sure, Rapido may onboard previously untapped restaurants, especially low AOV eateries in tier 2 and 3 cities, onto its platform. This will expand the overall food delivery market rather than poach the customer base of the incumbents.   

Needless to say, Zomato and Swiggy will likely double down on what they do best: faster deliveries, hyperlocal dominance, and deeper discounts.

Is Rapido Biting More Than It Can Chew?

Rapido has entered the food delivery fight club at a time when restaurant owners are fed up with the unsustainable cost structure of Zomato and Swiggy. Ownly’s arrival has spiced up the competition and may compel market heavyweights to rethink their pricing models.

That said, real disruption will require more than low commissions and fleet reallocation.

Until then, Zomato and Swiggy’s structural advantages—dense restaurant networks, loyal customer bases, and operational muscle—remain intact.

It’s a hyper-competitive platform economy and India’s food delivery industry has been unforgiving.

Will Rapido trigger material shifts in the market share or is it just an exaggeration?

Only time will tell.

“Every person should have the luxury of choice and the ability to order a reasonably priced meal.”

This is Rapido’s tagline-cum-mission as it plans to burst into the food delivery scene with “Ownly.”

With a soft launch on cards in Bengaluru in late June-early July, the ride-hailing platform is looking to shake the duopoly that Zomato and Swiggy have long enjoyed.

Rapido has joined forces with the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), which represents over 500,000 restaurants nationwide. 

Both parties have been brainstorming with each other for the last 6 months to build the right commercial and logistic structures for partner restaurateurs and food delivery.

So, what’s so big deal about it?

Small Restaurateurs, Big Problems with Zomato and Swiggy

Zomato and Swiggy’s commission-heavy model often works against small-to-medium restaurant owners. As they handle a lower order volume than larger outlets, the high platform commissions eat into their already-thin margins.

On the flip side, large restaurant chains have greater negotiating power given their high order volumes, enabling them to negotiate sweeter deals. As such, the playing field becomes uneven where the smaller guys have to either comply or risk invisibility.

In a LinkedIn post, Vandit Malik, founder of the Garlic Bread, explained how Zomato is eating into small biz’s profits due to costly ads.

Few Challengers Entered The Kitchen….And Got Burned

Rapido isn’t the first to challenge the Swiggy-Zomato duopoly. Various ride-hailing giants have tried their best to breach India’s food delivery wall, all of which have had to retreat. 

• Ola launched Ola Cafe in 2015, and later on acquired Foodpanda India in 2017. Despite heavy investment and efforts, Ola’s venture fizzled out. By 2019, it was all curtains for the ride-hailing service in the space due to operational inefficiencies and stiff competition. 
• Uber launched Uber Eats India in 2017 but had to shut down its operations three years later, selling the business to Zomato in January 2020.

Rapido’s New Recipe for Food Delivery

Rapido has proposed two game-changing moves to disrupt India’s ~$55 Bn online food delivery market:

Flat Fees, Lower Commission

Rapido has introduced a three-tier pricing model. It’ll charge a fixed delivery fee of ₹50 on orders above ₹400 and ₹25 on orders totaling ₹100-400. That said, both restaurant owners and consumers will share the burden for food orders below ₹100 (cross-subsidizing). Rapido will deduct these charges from the order value. All these within a standard 4-km radius and exclusive of the GST (18%).

That means restaurants need to pay an 8-15% commission based on the average order value (AOV), a 50% slash from what Swiggy and Zomato charge from their partner restaurants: 16-30%.

Rapido’s lower commissions are appealing to small-to-mid-sized eateries that often run on large low-ticket order volumes, are price sensitive, and hence, grapple with high aggregator fees.

Online Price=Offline Price

Rapido Ownly has urged partner restaurants to price the meals on its platform the same as in dine-ins. The ride-hailing unicorn has claimed that online food delivery is expensive and the trend will only go north. Hence, most Indian consumers get shooed away. 

“We will only be looking to work with partners who can commit to this stand of honest pricing.”

Said Rapido in its proposal.

So, it’s in talks with restaurateurs to list at least four dishes below ₹150 each to attract new users and make food more affordable for the existing ones. Plus, these food items will be shown more prominently to customers.

This is particularly a welcome move for the vast, price-conscious people in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, where online food delivery penetration is showing promising signs.

Besides, the affordability means restaurateurs no longer need to rely on discounts and offers to improve their visibility. All thanks to Rapido’s no-discount platform that’s planting the spotlight firmly back on product and price. Simply put, the meals will be front and center on Rapido’s food delivery app, alongside the entire menu.

How Much Your Meal Will Likely Cost on Rapido Ownly Then?

You won’t have to pay platform or packaging fees, except for a small delivery fee for orders below ₹100. And of course, the 18% GST.

So, here’s how Rapido Ownly’s move can impact your final bill:

A meal that costs ₹199 will cost ₹199 on the menu, whether online or offline (plus GST). Only ordering via the former will attract delivery fees. No platform markups, packaging, and other hidden fees (dark patterns).

But, How Will Rapido Make Profits?

I know you must be thinking about this. Rapido has answered that question. 

“We hope to bring delivery costs down across the industry… Once we have brought about real structural change in delivery prices, we will look to charge a flat subscription fee from restaurants. We will always remain zero commission.”

Unlike Zomato and Swiggy, which offer ad and marketing solutions for restaurants to boost reach, Rapido will equip its partner restaurants with the data and tools necessary to offer discounts to select customers. But it has asserted not to use discounting to push down prices on the app or compel restaurateurs to do so.

A Disruptor or A Has-Been?

While Rapido might rebrand its food delivery venture in the future, the company won’t budge on its mission of offering more affordable meals to customers. Its price structure rethinking is an open challenge to Swiggy and Zomato, who have irked small restaurants with their commission-based models.

Furthermore, Rapido’s equal focus on India’s price-conscious diners can just spice up a revolution, in times where people have to trade off convenience with premium charges.

Currently carrying passengers in 100 cities, Rapido aims to serve 500 cities across India by 2025. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for about 7 decades, constantly sprouting advanced concepts like machine learning (ML), robotics, natural language learning (NLP), computer vision, deep learning, and sentiment analysis, among others, over time.

All these powerful AI technologies have helped businesses dive into market trends and peek into customers’ brains to make accurate, mission-critical decisions.

Cut to November 2022, generative AI (GenAI) stormed onto the scene. It’s been just about 2 years, and answer engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity have already become central to boardroom discussions and everyday workflows.

Read the latest tech news, and you’ll find GenAI hogging more than half of them. 

Of course, GenAI has been a welcome addition to the business ecosystem. You use it to brainstorm specific topics and ideas, conduct quick research, generate stunning images, and convert lengthy content into easy-to-understand summaries.

But, there’s one area where GenAI has truly shone for businesses, where traditional AI technologies have somewhat struggled: Making sense of the unstructured data.

Buried Insights: The Massive Challenge of Unstructured Data

Every organization produces tons of unstructured data—say, meeting notes, emails, chat logs, customer-facing calls, PDFs, customer reviews, and product roadmaps. Unlike structured data, these insights don’t fit nicely into rows and columns, making them difficult to store, search, and analyze.

For years, businesses have turned to traditional AI solutions to house customer and industry-related information. While many captured it, few managed it well or made sense of it. That said, employees have had to dig for relevance and meaning from unstructured data and consistently update the systems. That was not only cumbersome but also created minimal value.

Imagine this: Valuable insights from team meetings scattered in meeting docs, emails, or even personal notebooks. Key conversations are siloed in call recordings, proposals, presentations, or support logs because employees can’t understand the key concepts well. All this crucial data remains buried in systems and documents that could illuminate strategic business needs.

So, what’s so big deal about it?

Here’s a quick reality check: In 2022, unstructured data made up a whopping 90% of the overall organizational data—only 10% was structured.

And get this: the world will store a staggering 200 zettabytes (ZB) of data by 2025.

This screams a massive gap in how businesses use data, leading to missed opportunities, frustrated customers, and business strategies that simply fall flat. 

Generative AI To The Rescue!

Organizations are swimming in data. While this “messy” data hides incredible insights, unlocking its real value is no cup of tea.

Fortunately, generative AI (GenAI) has changed all of that. Now, businesses can use unstructured data in countless ways, inventing new use cases every single day.

So, How Exactly Does Generative AI Help Here?

GenAI feeds on a huge corpus of data to learn and interpret how we humans communicate. Thanks to this immense training, coupled with its existing capabilities, it analyzes the context—tone, meaning, and intent—within the data. And that too within a few minutes.

This cutting-edge capability opens a plethora of use cases for your business:

• Quick Summaries: Get crisp, clear takeaways from lengthy reports, meetings, audios/videos, or feedback.
• Key Insights: Easily pull out important terms, keywords, topics, and subtopics from large bodies of text like news articles and research papers.
• Smart Organization: Automatically sort transcripts, reviews, or responses into predefined categories based on sentiment and intent.
• Spotting Trends: Analyze customer-facing conversations to find gaps in your processes, predict what they’ll need, and explore growth avenues. 
• Understanding Emotions: Find out how customers actually feel from their feedback—rant or compliment—across social media and news aggregator platforms.
• Personalized Experiences: Use captured insights to deliver at-scale personalized experiences to customers. 
• Creating Drafts: Turn raw notes from docs, meetings, and even handwritten scribbles into polished drafts.
• Breaking Down Silos: Organize scattered inputs from multiple teams into actionable outputs, keeping everyone on the same page.

Here are some examples:

Content Writing

• Unstructured data: Jotted-down notes and rough ideas.
• GenAI Output: Polished blog drafts, clear content outlines, and ready-to-publish social media posts.
• Example: You’re brainstorming with Gemini on a topic. You share your thoughts, notes, and ideas, and instruct Gemini to create a structured outline for a 1000-word article.

Digital Marketing

• Unstructured Data: Raw survey results, customer reviews, and campaign feedback.
• GenAI Output: Deeper insights, common customer questions (FAQ), and refined branding strategies.
• Example: You instruct ChatGPT to find out why people love your customer service software based on the reviews (squeezed out from a PDF file).

The Catch: Where Generative AI Still Needs Work

It’s not all that rosy with GenAI. Here’s why:

The “Messiness” Makes Mapping Difficult

Unstructured data has unlimited variants due to its non-formatted nature. Take invoices, for example. You think an invoice is just a list of items and prices, right? Ummm…No. That’s not how GenAI sees it.

If you get 50 invoices from your vendors, no two might look the same. They’ll have their own schemas. What’s more, every invoice has various types of discounts. Some are for buying a specific quantity, others for being a long-time customer, or even special deals for specific products.

These aren’t just a simple “Discount: 10%.” The generative engine needs to understand why there’s a discount and how the vendor has calculated it. This often involves reading the surrounding text and understanding the context.

So, automatically pulling out these insights becomes one hell of a task than just looking for a simple “total.”

You’ll need to consistently and accurately map them to a common schema (most notably JSON schema) every single time. In other words, you have to enter very detailed instructions—sometimes hundreds of lines long.

That’s a lot of business logic and human expertise.

Still In Its Early Days

GenAI bridges the gap between messy data and the neat, structured systems businesses use. But let’s not double down on it. Right now, it’s still slow, not worth the money, and only handles small data chunks at a time. This is a challenge, even for small businesses, which generate data in terabytes (TB).

Plus, GenAI has much smaller context windows than the enormous volumes organizations need to sift through regularly.

Time to Dig Into The Underutilized Asset

Data is the fuel that drives AI engines. But that tank has mostly been empty because an enormous portion of enterprise data is unstructured—and for too long, it has sat largely untapped. Most businesses couldn’t figure out how to “fill the tank.”

Thanks to GenAI, an unexploited treasure trove is now up for grabs, with more and more organizations making it a crucial component of innovative and analytical enterprise applications. Tap into this incredible opportunity before that ship sails!

That said, unstructured data boasts varied complexity—a wide-ranging spectrum. At its lower end, traditional AI solutions work pretty accurately and without hurting the bank balance. GenAI is yet to tick that checkbox.

But, for workflows that demand human expertise due to the complexity and the unlimited data variance, GenAI is a promising technology to automate such agentic systems and free humans.

So, the question is: are you ready to harness more of your enterprise data, and especially that rich human-generated unstructured goldmine, as you implement AI-enabled systems? The answer should be a big fat “Yes.”

SEO has done a full 180!

Almost a year ago, people focused solely on improving their brand’s SEO, looking for “7 Organic Strategies to Boost Site Rankings.”

But now? My LinkedIn and Instagram feeds are brimming with posts like “How to Get Your Brand Into Gen AI Responses” and “How Zero-Click Searches Are Changing SEO.”

SEO isn’t just about dropping well-placed keywords/phrases, evenly sprinkling hyperlinks/backlinks throughout an article, or updating the content with recent statistics and better examples.

It’s also about ensuring that generative AI platforms—large language models (LLM)—like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini understand and recommend your brand in their answers. Otherwise called generative engine optimization (GEO) or LLMO.

The question is, how to improve your brand’s GEO? I’m about to show you how with these five simple strategies. Use them to rewrite your SEO playbook, and your traffic metrics will thank you.

Stamp Your Authority

Authority matters more than ever in Gen AI platforms. You need to prove you know your stuff to pop up in AI-generated responses. Authoritative elements boost the odds of a content getting pulled into AI-powered search tools by 30-40%.

How to make your content a trustworthy information source?

• Add a fact or quote from a reliable source. For instance, in pieces associated with history, culture, society, and people.
• Drop in relevant stats to strengthen your arguments, for example, when writing on law and government or expressing opinions that might spark a controversy.
• Share valuable industry insights through your own research-heavy thought leadership content pieces or personal experiences.
• Include subject matter experts (SME) within your business in the writing process. Ask them for fresh insights and quotes, or maybe numbers to make your article stand out. Have them review your article. They’re the ones who’ll walk you through the ground reality of the topic you’re writing on.

Remember, always ensure the statistics you add are up-to-the-minute. I’m talking about the primary sources of the statistics here, not those hyperlinks that trap you into a loop of clicks and redirecting, only to find out that the numbers are years old. I prefer adding data that’s at max a year old or maybe two. Not before that.

Also, take stats from high domain-authority (DA) websites, think Forbes, IDC, McKinsey, Deloitte, and Wall Street Journal, to name a few.

In a nutshell, a nuanced understanding, a thunderbolt insight, a personal experience, and a playful choice of words—these elements uplift a content piece from mind-numbing to mind-blowing.

Write For Humans (Too)

Gen AI platforms run on natural language processing (NLP) to provide information summarized into easy-to-understand responses. That means your content should feel like a chat with a friend not a boring lecture.

Now don’t start writing “F-laced” content pieces or add dozens of “uhhh” and “ummm” to make them human-like. Don’t channel your inner “Sam Jackson” into writing content pieces. Absolutely not!

Your content’s tone and style should mimic how we humans speak and how we enter voice/text queries. If needed, break the rules of grammar and convention to change the content rhythm to avoid readers dozing off. (Don’t worship Grammarly like a God)

• Pose titles/headers/sub-headers as questions.
• Turn cliches into puns or humor.
• Use first- or second-person voice to strengthen your brand narrative.
• Pay special attention to intros and outros, where robotic and obvious statements could get skipped over by LLMs. Make the intros, in particular, engaging and thought-provoking that make the readers scroll down in interest.
• Include long-tail keywords as they are less competitive and satisfy user intent more specifically. For instance, for a generic keyword “Weight Loss,” you can add long-tail keywords like “How to lose weight fast for women over 40.”

Create Content That’s Easy to Skim

Keep your content simple and easy to read. People can’t follow information presented in an overly complex manner, nor do AI-enabled search platforms. They don’t read like us—they scan patterns and key points to interpret your message accurately.

Of course, many will still read an entire article, but when writing online, you want to hook readers and draw their interest to the sections they most want to read.

Here’s how you can organize your articles:

• Logical heading hierarchy from H1 through H4 to help readers skim and bots understand context.
• Bullet points and tables to summarize data at the end (key takeaways) or when explaining benefits, features, or how-tos in crisp sentences.
• Short sentences and paragraphs wherever possible for more clarity. I know it’s jarring, especially for those writers (including me) who enjoy a good, long, meandering sentence. But let’s not deny that trimming your texts helps both humans and LLMs follow your train of thought without derailing.
• A series of high-quality images with descriptive captions and alt texts in between sections helps readers digest your article quickly.
• Make your content visually appealing with infographics, graphs, and videos. The more media readers can gather information from, the better (within reason!).
• Add a dedicated FAQ section to get your content featured in the “People Also Ask.”

Don’t Underestimate UGC Platforms

People want to know what others are talking about your brand or offerings that they are interested in online. Community-based platforms, most notably Reddit and Quora, best serve the purpose. Reddit, for instance, hosted 108.1 million daily active users (DAU) during Q1 2025.

“Our content is particularly important for artificial intelligence (“AI”) – it is a foundational part of how many of the leading large language models (“LLMs”) have been trained.” – Reddit, S-1 filing with the SEC.

In fact, Reddit is one of the primary sources of user-generated content (UGC)—Google even tied up with the platform in early 2024 to use its answers to train its LLMs.

Multiple leading LLMs are already tapping into public web data when giving responses. And why not? Such online forums and news aggregators are a UGC goldmine. So, strengthen your brand footprint in these platforms by:

• Building a community of people who love your product/services
• Hosting transparent “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) regularly
• Partnering with niche influencers
• Publishing in-depth technical analysis of industry trends, challenges and opportunities
• Showcasing expertise in relevant industry discussions

These tactics work wonders only if you engage with users without any salesy ick. Remember, users quickly identify and reject it promotional content (like spamming subreddits with links to your website), but welcome valuable insights.

Don’t Ditch Traditional SEO (Please!)

Different Gen AI tools pull data from different search engines. For instance, ChatGPT banks on Bing search results, while Gemini and Perplexity use Google search data. So, don’t think that traditional SEO is dead or about to fade out soon, ever.

Still don’t believe me?

A 2025 study analyzed 10,000 high-search-volume, purchase-intent queries and found a strong correlation (~0.65) between organic rankings and LLM brand mentions. This correlation strengthened when filtering out forums, aggregators, and social media, focusing on solution-focused content.

Moral of the story? GEO builds on the core SEO principles.

Innovate, Adapt, and Lead The Traffic War

While the playbook to sneak into AI-generated responses is still being written, one thing is crystal clear: you need to plug into LLMs to make your brand visible.

Context is the real gold; it’s time to mine it.

When you create conversational, structured, and authoritative content and combine these efforts with solid technical optimizations, you’ll see your content popping up in both traditional search engine results and LLM-generated responses.

Mastering this shift isn’t just an upgrade—it’s the key to staying ahead in the race for relevance. 

(A short prologue)

Do you know how people (including you, of course) buy products from a store or why they simply window-shop and move past?

I mean the psychology: What goes on in people’s minds when they see an electronic item, for instance? How do they decide whether to buy it or explore further?

Let’s break down what they call the “buyer psychology.”

What Is The Buyer Psychology?

First: You (the buyer) visit a multi-brand electronic store to purchase a smartphone. You glance through multiple smartphone models and stop at one. A salesperson attends to you who provides the general deets of the electronic product.

Second: If that raises your eyebrows, you both hash over other smartphone brands and models (just for an idea). You then determine which among them meets most (if not all) of your expectations—RAM/ROM, battery, camera quality, and most importantly, value for money.

Third: After minutes of exploration, phone by phone, you realize that some other smartphone brand ticks more checkboxes, especially the last one, than the one you first stumbled upon. You inquire about that smartphone to the salesperson and weigh the pros and cons.

Fourth: You’re done with your brief investigation. The salesperson gave you a “double thumbs up” for your choice. You’re now super-sure that you’ll go with the smartphone—and you purchase it. Congratulations!

(It’s showtime now!)

The big question is: how should your brand—whether you’re flying solo or running a company—use this analogy to boost your sales or, at least, multiply your growth in the digital ecosystem? Especially in times when people demand authenticity and connection with brands?

You’re in luck! I’ve reframed it into 4 key, distinct stages of the customer buying journey. Let’s dive in.

Inform

This is the initial stage where your content acts as an educator or a resource. You address the audience’s pain points, answer their questions, or introduce them to a solution (s) they might not even know they need. In other words, the “what,” “who,” “where,” and “how” at a foundational level.

How to do it?

Publish blog posts, articles, whitepapers, how-to guides, and explainer videos that cover common customer questions, define industry terms, or present factual data. Simply put, surface-level information.

For instance, if you’re a SaaS company, you can publish an “Ultimate Guide to Cloud Security Best Practices.” Or if you’re a financial institution, create an article on “Understanding Different Types of Investments for Beginners.”

With these content pieces, you become a reliable information source in your audience’s minds. You aren’t selling yet, but laying the groundwork.

Infer

Once you inform your audience, you act as a guide, proactively helping them infer. This means presenting information supported by relevant and accurate statistics, proofs, and real-time scenarios.

That way, your audience can draw their own conclusions based on their pain points or needs or somehow understand that solutions (like yours) would be an antidote to their specific problem.

Other words, it addresses the “why” and “so what” beyond the surface facts.

How to do it?

• Case studies that showcase how a solution similar to yours has solved a specific customer problem.
• Industry trends report that present complex data in easily digestible formats (think infographics and charts) to highlight evolving trends.
• Comparison articles that let readers weigh the pros and cons of different solutions and decide the most suitable one for them.

For instance,

• A digital marketing agency publishing a case study showing “How Our Client Increased Leads by 300% Using Automated Funnels.” (readers understanding the power of automation and how the agency’s offering works for similar situations).
• A cybersecurity firm presenting statistics on the rising costs of data breaches, highlighting the urgent need for organizations to turn to robust security solutions.
• A fitness brand laying out pros and cons of different types of gym workouts, letting readers decide which suits them better (and aligns with the brand’s offering)

Think of it this way: A lawyer presenting pieces of evidence to support his/her claims that, once put together by the judge (the audience), showcase a crystal-clear picture.

Interest

In this penultimate phase, you spark the person’s interest in your specific offerings such that they don’t feel like browsing someplace else. Here, you focus on making your products/services undeniably irresistible by highlighting what makes you stand a yard apart from your market rivals through gripping messaging.

How to do it?

• High-quality product pages, featuring stunning visuals, to-the-point benefits and functionalities, and captivating copywriting.
• Testimonials and success stories to showcase how your solution has genuinely helped existing or previous clients.
• Behind-the-scenes (BTS) content (videos or carousels) to demo the hard work and good intentions behind your brand.
• Storytelling videos to walk people through your brand’s vision, mission, or origin.
• Interactive demos, like AR virtual try-ons, to let users try on the product before making the final decision. You can embed such tools into your website, social media handle, and mobile app.
• Comparison pages that convince people of why your product beats your competitors’. Boast features or offers you believe are “error 404” in your competitors.
• Listicles like “10 Best XYZ Platforms.” Here, you talk about the pros and cons of 9 other companies and describe your brand’s offerings. Ideally, you should start or end listicles with your brand. I prefer the latter. Because your brand pops up in the end, right when readers get stuck at the crossroads deciding which platform suits them better. Then, you lay bare your product’s unique value propositions (UVP) and how they best serve your audience versus others. Don’t exaggerate, just say the truth with subtle sugarcoating.

For instance, an interior designer uploads an Instagram reel where he/she visits a client’s site to explain different types of materials used to make the home’s interior aesthetically and functionally sound.

Such informative content gets you bookmarked in the viewers’ brains. So, if one of your prospects is in dire need of a solution, they’ll simply turn to you.

Interact

Finally, you drive your now interested audience to interact. This is the stage where you stave off any friction and offer prospects clear pathways to purchase your offering—a conversion point or a sales opportunity.

How to do it?

• Persuasive and wisely placed CTAs (calls to action) throughout your content and across your website, including the home page, the products/services pages, and the “contact us” page. Examples include “Get a Quote,” “Sign Up for Free Trial,” “Download E-book,” and “Buy Now.”
• Customer support and live chat to clear any prospect’s query that might pop into their minds while making the purchase.
• Reminder email sequences or retargeting ads to follow up with leads as a gentle nudge.
• Minimal steps to complete a purchase.
• Social media posts with direct links to product pages or special offers.

For instance, a SaaS provider placing a “Start Your Free Trial” option at the bottom of its website’s service pages. Or a freelancer having a prominent “Request a Custom Quote” button on his/her website’s home page and contact us. You are offering customers a direct, actionable step to get done with the purchase.

Make Your Content Count

So, there you have it: the 4Is in action! By carefully weaving Inform, Infer, Interest, and Interact into every piece of digital content, you can do more than just publish—you can truly connect, persuade, and convert. It’s about building a genuine journey for your audience, guiding them step-by-step from curious visitor to loyal customer.

Put your 4Is (eyes or perceptions) to work and watch your brand thrive!