The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is officially here after two leading telcos, Mukesh Ambani’s Jio and Sunil Bharti Mittal’s Airtel, officially tied up with SpaceX to bring its Starlink high-speed satellite Internet services to India.
Reliance Jio made the announcement early Wednesday, the day after Bharti Airtel announced a similar agreement on Tuesday evening.
“Our collaboration with SpaceX to bring Starlink to India strengthens our commitment and marks a transformative step toward seamless broadband connectivity for all,” Mathew Oommen, the Group CEO of Reliance Jio, was quoted as saying.
“By integrating Starlink into Jio's broadband ecosystem, we are expanding our reach and enhancing the reliability and accessibility of high-speed broadband in this AI-driven era, empowering communities and businesses across the country."
SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell said: “We applaud Jio's commitment to advancing India's connectivity. We are looking forward to working with Jio and receiving authorisation from the Government of India to provide more people, organizations and businesses with access to Starlink's high-speed internet services.”
Bharti Airtel MD and VC Gopal Vittal had also highlighted the agreement between the two giants as significant. “Working with SpaceX to offer Starlink to Airtel customers in India is a significant milestone and further demonstrates our commitment to next-generation satellite connectivity,” he said.
Musk’s official entry to India follows months of speculation. In October last year, the tech billionaire – worth $324.3 billion as of Wednesday morning, according to the Forbes Real Time Billionaires List – had thanked telecom minister Jyotiraditya Scindia for not agreeing with Ambani and Mittal on auctioning spectrum for satellite services.
Reacting to Scindia's statement that satellite spectrum would not be auctioned, Musk, in a post on X, had written: "Much appreciated! We will do our best to serve the people of India with Starlink.”
Starlink’s pact with the telco giants comes at a time when Musk’s Tesla is already showing interest in the Indian electric vehicles market. Tesla has reportedly finalised a 4,000-square-foot showroom in Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex.
Musk’s Boring Company, which focuses on tunneling and infrastructure, has also kept an eye on India’s urban transportation projects in cities such as Mumbai and Bengaluru. Neuralink, Musk’s venture in the medical healthcare sector which focuses on brain-computer interfaces, is also looking at India’s medical sector.
Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP Saket Gokhale was the first off the block in reacting to Musk’s India foray. “In any other country, this would be blocked as a monopoly. Customers wanting satellite internet will have NO OPTION except Starlink,” he wrote on X.
Elon Musk is a polarising figure globally. US President Donald Trump calls him a “genius”, others call him a billionaire funding Right-wing parties and sowing misinformation.
In Europe, particularly, anger against Musk has seen Tesla sales plummeting. Musk has supported far-Right parties in Europe including the AfD in Germany and has had spats with everyone from the British PM to the country of Poland. He also wants the US to quit Nato.
In the Trump administration he is head of what The New York Times calls “the so-called Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE that has sparked terror across federal employees in the US who suddenly find themselves on the verge of being laid off.
Elon Musk’s journey
Elon Musk, born June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, was raised by his mother, Maye, a model and dietitian, and his father, Errol, an engineer. Musk reportedly taught himself to code at age 10. He moved to Canada at 17 and later earned degrees in physics and economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Musk’s entrepreneurial journey began with Zip2, a web software company he co-founded in 1995. He sold it to Compaq for $307 million four years later. He then co-founded X.com, an online payment company that merged with PayPal, sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
In 2002, he founded SpaceX to revolutionise space travel, aiming to colonise Mars. The company achieved milestones like the first privately funded rocket to orbit Earth and reusable rocket technology.
In 2004, Musk joined Tesla Motors (now Tesla, Inc), becoming its driving force as CEO, transforming electric vehicles into a mainstream reality with models like the Tesla Roadster and Model S.
In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink to merge human intelligence with AI, and The Boring Company to innovate infrastructure through tunneling.
In October 2022, Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion. A year later he rebranded it to X.