The Cited Index is the first public ranking of Indian brands by AI visibility. It tracks 257 brands across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity — measuring how often each brand appears when users ask non-branded shopping-intent prompts. 185 prompts. 740 AI responses. 8 categories. Every brand ranked, scored, and broken down by platform.
The highest-scoring brand is Zoho CRM at 88.8%. The lowest-scoring categories average under 25%. The full rankings are free, public, and available at getcited.in/cited-index.
Key findings from 257 Indian brands
These are the headline findings from the March 2026 Cited Index:
→ Zoho CRM has the highest AI Citation Rate of any Indian brand at 88.8% — scoring 100% on both ChatGPT and Gemini. Every CRM prompt we ran on those platforms mentioned Zoho.
→ Minimalist is the most visible Indian D2C brand at 83% — and scores 100% on Claude, meaning every skincare prompt on Claude returns a Minimalist mention. Neutrogena, with decades of global brand equity, scores 5%.
→ PhonePe leads Digital Payments at 87.5% with no platform score below 85%. Google Pay follows at 80%, Paytm at 73.8%.
→ Indian audio brands have the weakest AI visibility of any category. The #1 brand, Noise, scores just 28%. boAt scores 27%. The entire category underperforms — no brand has an AI Citation Rate above 30%.
→ The same brand can score 88% on one platform and 4% on another. Mokobara scores 88% on Gemini but 4% on Claude — an 84-point gap. Platform disagreement is the norm, not the exception.
→ SaaS brands are 2–3x more visible than D2C brands. The average top-5 score in CRM & Sales is 61%. In Audio & Wearables, it's 24%.
→ Most Indian brands are invisible to AI. In nearly every category, the bottom half scores below 15%. These include established brands with real revenue — not startups.
What we measured
The methodology is straightforward. We run non-branded consumer prompts — the kind real buyers type into AI models — across four platforms: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity. Each brand's AI Citation Rate is the percentage of responses where it gets mentioned, averaged equally across platforms.
An AI Citation Rate of 80% means the brand appears in 80% of relevant AI responses. An AI Citation Rate of 5% means AI almost never recommends it.
We track 8 categories across four verticals:
D2C Consumer Brands: Travel & Luggage (17 brands), Audio & Wearables (20 brands), Skincare & Beauty (20 brands)
B2B SaaS: CRM & Sales (49 brands), HR & Payroll (28 brands)
Fintech: Digital Payments (53 brands), Credit Cards (39 brands)
Edtech: Online Learning (31 brands)
Brands aren't pre-selected. They're discovered organically — if an AI model mentions a brand in response to our prompts, that brand enters the index.
Skincare & Beauty: Minimalist dominates
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Minimalist is the most visible Indian skincare brand in AI search, with an AI Citation Rate of 83% across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity. Minimalist scores 100% on Claude — every single skincare prompt we ran on Claude returned a Minimalist mention.
The Derma Co ranks second at 52%. Dot & Key ranks third at 42%. Plum scores 38%. Deconstruct scores 34%.
| Rank | Brand | AI Citation Rate | ChatGPT | Gemini | Claude | Perplexity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Minimalist | 83% | 92% | 92% | 100% | 48% |
| 2 | The Derma Co | 52% | 72% | 84% | 28% | 24% |
| 3 | Dot & Key | 42% | 16% | 44% | 96% | 12% |
| 4 | Plum | 38% | 24% | 28% | 64% | 36% |
| 5 | Deconstruct | 34% | 44% | 64% | 12% | 16% |
The gap between #1 and #20 is 78 points. Neutrogena — with decades of global brand equity — has an AI Citation Rate of just 5% in India. Legacy brand strength does not automatically translate to AI recommendations.
Why does Minimalist win? It's a Layer 2 (Citability) advantage in the 3-Layer AI Visibility Stack. Minimalist's product pages list exact ingredient concentrations, specific use-case targeting, and price-per-unit data. This is the kind of specificity AI models extract and cite. Neutrogena's Indian pages lead with marketing copy — AI models skip adjectives and cite specifics.
See the full Skincare & Beauty rankings →
Digital Payments: PhonePe leads on every platform
PhonePe is the most visible digital payments brand in AI search in India, with an AI Citation Rate of 87.5%. PhonePe scores 90% on ChatGPT, 85% on Gemini, 90% on Claude, and 85% on Perplexity — no platform score below 85%.
Google Pay ranks second at 80%. Paytm ranks third at 73.8%. BHIM scores 35%. CRED scores 27.5%.
| Rank | Brand | AI Citation Rate | ChatGPT | Gemini | Claude | Perplexity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | PhonePe | 87.5% | 90% | 85% | 90% | 85% |
| 2 | Google Pay | 80% | 85% | 90% | 75% | 70% |
| 3 | Paytm | 73.8% | 75% | 80% | 55% | 85% |
| 4 | BHIM | 35% | 30% | 35% | 25% | 50% |
| 5 | CRED | 27.5% | 25% | 40% | 20% | 25% |
CRED at 27.5% shows that a strong consumer brand with high brand awareness does not guarantee AI visibility. PhonePe's advantage is at Layer 3 (Authority) — deep presence across review sites, app stores, financial comparison platforms, and news coverage gives every AI model a different citation path.
53 brands are tracked in Digital Payments — the most of any category in the Cited Index. The bottom third scores below 5%. Check where your payment brand ranks →
Audio & Wearables: the weakest category in AI search
Audio & Wearables has the lowest AI visibility of any category in the Cited Index. The #1 brand, Noise, scores just 28%. boAt scores 27%. Samsung scores 23%. Apple scores 22%. Sony scores 22%.
| Rank | Brand | AI Citation Rate | ChatGPT | Gemini | Claude | Perplexity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Noise | 28% | 28% | 36% | 28% | 20% |
| 2 | boAt | 27% | 28% | 28% | 24% | 28% |
| 3 | Samsung | 23% | 28% | 28% | 20% | 16% |
| 4 | Apple | 22% | 24% | 28% | 16% | 20% |
| 5 | Sony | 22% | 24% | 20% | 20% | 24% |
No Indian audio brand has an AI Citation Rate above 30%. Compare that to Minimalist's 83% in Skincare or PhonePe's 87.5% in Digital Payments. The entire category is underperforming — not because AI doesn't answer audio prompts, but because no brand has built the comparison content, technical spec sheets, and review roundups that AI models extract and cite.
This is a category-wide Layer 2 (Citability) failure. Indian audio brands invest in Instagram reels and influencer partnerships — content formats that AI models cannot read. Noise and boAt are separated by just 1 percentage point. In a category this compressed, small content improvements could shift rankings significantly.
CRM & Sales: Zoho's AI visibility moat
Zoho CRM has the highest AI Citation Rate of any brand in the Cited Index — 88.8% across all four platforms, scoring 100% on both Gemini and ChatGPT. Every CRM prompt we ran on ChatGPT and Gemini mentioned Zoho.
Freshsales ranks second at 67.5%. LeadSquared ranks third at 56.2%. Salesforce — the global CRM market leader by revenue — scores 41.2% in India. Zoho has built an AI visibility advantage that Salesforce's market share has not matched.
Zoho wins across all three layers of the AI Visibility Stack. Layer 1 (Discoverability): technically flawless site with structured data on every page. Layer 2 (Citability): hundreds of comparison pages, feature breakdowns, and use-case content that AI extracts directly. Layer 3 (Authority): dominant third-party coverage across review sites, blogs, and technical analyses.
49 brands are tracked in CRM & Sales. The bottom half scores below 10%.
Three patterns across 257 brands
1. The same brand scores differently on every AI platform
The #1 brand on ChatGPT is almost never #1 on Gemini. Platform disagreement is the most consistent pattern in the data.
Mokobara scores 88% on Gemini but 4% on Claude — an 84-point gap for the same brand, the same week. Dot & Key scores 96% on Claude but 12% on Perplexity. Keka HR scores 85% on Claude but 0% on Perplexity.
Each AI model uses different training data, different retrieval systems, and different source weighting. A brand's visibility on ChatGPT tells you nothing about its visibility on Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity. Optimising for one platform and ignoring others is like optimising for Google and ignoring the rest of the internet.
2. B2B SaaS brands are 2–3x more visible than Indian D2C brands
The average top-5 AI Citation Rate in CRM & Sales is 61%. In HR & Payroll, 59%. In Digital Payments, 61%.
The average top-5 AI Citation Rate in Audio & Wearables is 24%. In Credit Cards, 31%. In Online Learning, 24%.
The gap is explained by the 3-Layer Stack:
→ Layer 1 (Discoverability): SaaS companies have structured data, sitemaps, and no crawler blocks. D2C brands often block AI crawlers in their robots.txt without knowing it.
→ Layer 2 (Citability): SaaS invests in comparison content, feature pages, and technical documentation — exactly what AI models extract. D2C invests in Instagram content — which AI models cannot read.
→ Layer 3 (Authority): SaaS has deep presence on G2, Capterra, and review sites. D2C has influencer mentions on Instagram Stories that disappear in 24 hours and leave no trace for AI models.
3. Most Indian brands are invisible to AI search
In nearly every category in the Cited Index, the bottom half of tracked brands scores below 15% on AI Citation Rate. Many score in single digits. These are not obscure startups — they include established brands with significant market share, real revenue, and active customers.
The brands scoring 60%+ have built content ecosystems that AI models can parse, cite, and recommend. The brands scoring under 15% have marketing websites designed for human browsers and Instagram campaigns that AI models cannot access. The gap is not about product quality. It is about content infrastructure.
What separates an 88% brand from a 5% brand
After analysing 257 Indian brands across 4 AI platforms, the pattern is clear:
Content specificity gets cited. Minimalist's product pages list exact ingredient concentrations, specific use cases, and price-per-unit data. Neutrogena's Indian pages lead with marketing copy. AI models cite specifics. They skip adjectives.
Third-party coverage compounds. Zoho CRM appears in hundreds of independent review articles, comparison pages, and technical analyses. That off-site presence — LinkedIn articles, Reddit discussions, review sites — feeds AI models the social proof they weight heavily.
Multi-platform content creates multiple citation paths. PhonePe doesn't just have a good website. It has deep presence across review sites, app stores, financial comparison platforms, and news coverage. Each source gives a different AI model a different path to cite the brand.
Visibility requires ongoing maintenance. AI models update constantly. GPT-5.4's 1M-token context window can now evaluate an entire website in a single pass. Google's March 2026 core update shifted AI Overview citation patterns. What works this month may not work next month.
How to check your brand's AI visibility
1. Check the Cited Index. The full Cited Index is free and public. Find your category, find your brand, see your per-platform breakdown. If your brand is not listed, it means AI models did not mention it in any of our 185 prompts — your AI Citation Rate is 0%.
2. Check your competitors. The platform breakdown reveals where competitors are strong and where they're weak. If your competitor scores 80% on Gemini but 10% on Perplexity, that's a platform-specific gap you can target.
3. Scan your website. The GEO Score scanner checks 15 AI-readiness signals on your website in 30 seconds — for free. It tells you whether your site is failing at Layer 1 (Discoverability) — blocked crawlers, missing schema, no llms.txt.
4. Get a full diagnostic. A free AI Visibility Report tests 20 prompts across 3 AI platforms with 24-hour turnaround. It shows you the exact language AI models use when discussing your brand and where the gaps are across all three layers.
This is edition one
The Cited Index launched with the March 2026 edition. It updates monthly. New categories will be added based on demand.
What won't change: every edition will be free, public, and specific. The full rankings are at getcited.in/cited-index.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Cited Index?
The Cited Index is a free, public ranking of 257 Indian brands by AI visibility. It measures how often each brand appears when users ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity non-branded shopping-intent prompts. It covers 8 categories: Travel & Luggage, Audio & Wearables, Skincare & Beauty, CRM & Sales, HR & Payroll, Digital Payments, Credit Cards, and Online Learning. Updated monthly.
Which Indian brand has the highest AI visibility in 2026?
Zoho CRM has the highest AI visibility of any Indian brand, with an AI Citation Rate of 88.8% across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity. Zoho CRM scores 100% on both ChatGPT and Gemini. In D2C, Minimalist leads Skincare & Beauty at 83%. PhonePe leads Digital Payments at 87.5%.
How visible are Indian D2C brands in AI search?
Most Indian D2C brands are invisible to AI search. In the Cited Index, the bottom half of all 257 tracked brands scores below 15% on AI Citation Rate. The average top-5 score in Audio & Wearables is just 24%, compared to 61% for CRM & Sales. D2C brands invest in Instagram and influencer marketing, which AI models cannot read or cite.
Why does the same brand score differently on ChatGPT vs Gemini vs Claude?
Each AI platform uses different training data, retrieval systems, and source weighting. For example, Mokobara scores 88% on Gemini but only 4% on Claude — an 84-point gap for the same brand. Dot & Key scores 96% on Claude but 12% on Perplexity. A brand's ChatGPT visibility tells you nothing about its visibility on other AI platforms.
What is the 3-Layer AI Visibility Stack?
The 3-Layer AI Visibility Stack is a framework for understanding why brands appear or don't appear in AI-generated answers. Layer 1 is Discoverability — can AI crawlers find your content? Layer 2 is Citability — when AI finds you, does it cite you? Layer 3 is Authority — when AI cites you, does it position you well compared to competitors? Most Indian brands fail at Layer 1.
How is AI Citation Rate calculated in the Cited Index?
AI Citation Rate is the percentage of AI responses that mention a brand, averaged equally across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity. For example, a score of 80% means the brand appears in 80% of relevant AI responses across all four platforms. The March 2026 edition analysed 740 AI responses across 185 non-branded shopping-intent prompts.
Is your brand visible to AI? Or invisible? The Cited Index ranks 257 Indian brands across 8 categories — free, no login. If you want to go deeper, get a free AI Visibility Report: 20 prompts, 3 AI platforms, delivered within 24 hours.