Businesses in ChatGPT: what it is and what Indian businesses can do with it today

It is a free dashboard called Business Hub where a verified owner manages how the business appears in ChatGPT and sees aggregated data on mentions and website clicks. Eligible US businesses can also publish a Business Agent, a chatbot that answers customer questions on the business's behalf.

You open the ChatGPT Business Hub from the sidebar or at chatgpt.com/business-hub. There are three parts, and you can use the first two without touching the third: the profile you control, the insights report, and the optional agent. OpenAI's own Businesses in ChatGPT page says a claimed profile shows a blue check, and that ChatGPT may show information about your business whether or not you claim it.

That last point matters more than it sounds. ChatGPT is already describing your business to people. Claiming simply lets you check what it says.

You search for your business in Business Hub, prove you own it, wait for OpenAI's review, and then pass a separate identity check with Persona. The blue check appears only after that second check is approved.

Ownership can be proved four ways. You can take a code on the business phone, take a code on the business email, add a DNS TXT record to your domain, or connect a Shopify store. For most of our clients at SIB Infotech, I recommend the DNS record as the cleanest route, because it's the same kind of proof Google Search Console asks for and the IT team has usually done it before.

The Persona step trips people up. It may ask for a government ID, business registration details and proof that you can represent the company, and the name and registration number have to match official records. If a junior marketing executive starts the claim, the founder or a director will probably need to finish it.

Two details are easy to miss. When you create a brand-new profile, OpenAI's approval publishes it automatically, and its support team can't delete or unpublish a published profile. And every edit you make goes through review before it shows, so don't expect a changed return policy to appear the same afternoon.

Insights show mentions, website clicks and discovery topics for the past 28 days. For an online business, a mention counts only when ChatGPT links to your website, so a brand named without a link doesn't register.

That rule cuts hard against manufacturers. In one test reported by Flavio Copes, ChatGPT recommended seven sock brands and retailers, but two of the brands it named got zero links because ChatGPT pointed people to retailers instead. A paint company or a pump maker that sells through dealers could be recommended often and still see small numbers in Business Hub.

Small businesses may also see blank metrics. OpenAI only shows a figure once activity crosses a reporting threshold, and a blank isn't the same as zero. You never see individual prompts or conversations.

You don't have to wait for Business Hub to start measuring. ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to the links it shows, so a GA4 report filtered on that source will tell you how many visits ChatGPT already sends. At SIB Infotech, we set that report up before any GEO work starts, because it gives a baseline the client can trust.

A Business Agent is an AI chat that sits on your ChatGPT profile and answers questions from the product and policy information you give it. A customer opens your profile, chooses to chat, and gets a separate, labelled conversation with your business.

Think of it as a WhatsApp Business chat where a bot replies instantly at 2 am. The comparison breaks down quickly, though. The agent can't complete purchases, take bookings or check an order, and it sends people to your website for those. OpenAI doesn't share the chats with you, so you get no phone number and no way to follow up.

OpenAI's policy also sets firm limits on what the agent can say. It must admit it's an AI, can't invent prices or stock, can't create false urgency, and can't ask for ID or financial details. OpenAI reviews the agent every time you change it.

For Indian sellers this is a waiting game. When it does open up, the businesses with clean policy pages and accurate product data will have the easiest setup.

If I had five minutes with OpenAI's CEO, my message would be short. It's a strong first version, but right now it asks businesses for a lot of work and gives them very little back.

The fixes, in order of impact

1. Let customers share their details with a business, by choice. A business owner spends on marketing for one thing, a customer they can call back. Today the business gets no contact details and can't see any chats, even with its own agent. An opt-in button such as "Share my number with this business" or "Continue on WhatsApp" keeps the customer in control and hands the business a real lead. In India, where so much selling happens on WhatsApp, that one button would do more for adoption than any other feature.
2. Count brand mentions as well as website links. A mention only counts when ChatGPT cites your website today, so a paint brand or tile maker that sells through dealers could be recommended a hundred times and see zero. Show "brand named" and "website cited" side by side.
3. Show businesses how they compare with competitors. The first thing any marketer asks is "how am I doing against the shop next door?" A share of voice figure, such as "you appeared in 12% of running shoe conversations and the category leader in 31%", would answer it. Add 12 months of history in place of 28 days and an export to GA4, or agencies will keep paying for third-party GEO tools.
4. Show what ChatGPT says about a business, and let the business flag mistakes. Editing a profile doesn't stop ChatGPT drawing on other sources. A brand snapshot with a "report incorrect information" button would catch the wrong prices and closed branches that hurt small businesses most.
5. Build for agencies from the start. Google Business Profile reached millions of small businesses because agencies claimed and fixed listings for them. Today each brand has to be claimed separately, with no central management. Agencies need a manager account like Google Ads MCC with bulk claiming, and a certified partner programme.
6. Give the agent more to do. Right now it can't sell or take a booking, which leaves it as an FAQ bot. Handover to a person on WhatsApp or a call would change that, and so would bookings for clinics and salons. In India, replies in Hindi and regional languages matter just as much.
7. Open it to India and to local businesses sooner. The doctor, the CA, the coaching class and the restaurant are exactly who people ask ChatGPT about. They need the basics Google already gives them, like opening hours and a WhatsApp button, plus product feeds priced in rupees.
8. Fix ad tracking before scaling ads. A 2.0 rating on the Shopify app and complaints about conversions not recording are poor early signals. Advertisers forgive a high cost per click when they can see results, and they stop spending when they can't. Reliable conversion tracking, reporting on conversations started from ads and daily budget caps should come first.
9. Make the rules clear and keep them steady. Google publicly says local ranking depends on relevance, distance and prominence, and OpenAI could give similar plain guidance without revealing its system. A promise that claiming stays free would also help, since the hint of future charges makes owners hold back. And businesses close and rebrand, so a published profile shouldn't be impossible to remove, which is how it works today.

A few out-of-the-box ideas

Some of these go beyond fixing the beta. They're ideas I think could make ChatGPT the place Indian businesses actually want to be listed.

• Verify Indian businesses the Indian way. A GSTIN, an Udyam registration or a UPI merchant ID already proves a business exists. Accepting these in place of document uploads would make claiming far easier for small sellers who don't keep scanned papers handy.
• Add a "get me quotes" request. A user asks for quotes from three pest control companies in Thane, ChatGPT sends the request to their agents with the user's consent, and the businesses reply. That turns ChatGPT into a consent-based lead marketplace for service businesses, which is how a lot of India already buys services.
• Charge sponsored agents per lead instead of per click. A business would pay only when a customer chooses to share contact details or book. Owners who've burnt money on clicks would find that far easier to approve.
• Share a "missed demand" report. Show the questions in a business's category where ChatGPT had no good answer or no business to suggest. For a business owner, that's a ready-made list of pages to write and products to stock.
• Show the sources behind each description. List the websites ChatGPT relied on when it described a business, so the owner can correct an outdated directory listing at the source instead of guessing.
• Track offline sales. A "found on ChatGPT" code or QR that the agent can share would let a shop or clinic count walk-ins and phone orders, which no dashboard captures today.
• Support festival and seasonal offers with dates. A Diwali hamper or a wedding season package could appear only when it's relevant and clearly labelled, then expire on its own.
• Import a Google Business Profile in one click. Hours and photos are already there for most businesses, and copying them would cut setup to minutes while keeping details consistent across both platforms.

The pitch fits in a sentence. Google won local business by being free, by giving owners something useful every month and by letting agencies do the heavy lifting, and if OpenAI copies those three things and adds leads a business can actually call back, Businesses in ChatGPT could become the next Google Business Profile.

Claim your profile now if you have a website and sell online, and fix your delivery and return policies before you do anything else. Those two pages are what ChatGPT, and later your agent, will quote to customers.

Then set up the utm_source=chatgpt.com report in GA4 and note your current ChatGPT traffic, so you can tell later whether the profile changed anything. OpenAI says plainly that claiming doesn't guarantee higher placement or sales.

If you run a local business in India, nothing is claimable yet. Use the time to tidy the things ChatGPT reads elsewhere: your Google Business Profile, your website's service pages and your reviews.

At SIB Infotech, we're helping clients claim and verify their ChatGPT profiles and set up the tracking around them. If you'd like a check of what ChatGPT currently says about your business, talk to the SIB Infotech team.

This guide is based on OpenAI's own launch announcement, product page, setup guide and Business Agents policy, read on launch day and cross-checked against independent coverage listed under Sources. Where a detail came from a third party rather than OpenAI, the link sits next to the claim. Businesses in ChatGPT is a beta, so I'll review this page monthly and update the date above when anything changes.

A quick disclosure: SIB Infotech offers ChatGPT SEO, ChatGPT Ads and Google Business Profile services, and some links in this article point to those pages.

• OpenAI, Businesses in ChatGPT
• Flavio Copes, A deep dive into Businesses in ChatGPT
• The Keyword, ChatGPT Opens Business Profiles and Agents to Brands
• The Next Web, OpenAI lets businesses claim ChatGPT profiles
• WebProNews, OpenAI Opens ChatGPT to Businesses
• 9to5Google, Google Business Messages is shutting down