Elon Musk's Troubled Tryst With India

Both Tesla and Starlink have been in limbo for over a year

- Surajeet Das

Last week, world headlines buzzed with Elon Musk's announcement that he was shelving his audacious bid for social media platform Twitter. Away from the media spotlight, questions are being asked about the maverick billionaire's plans in India, too.

A few days ago, a Reuters report said Musk's flagship Tesla had put on hold its plan to launch electric cars in India. Tesla has abandoned its search for showroom space, reassigned its small India team around the globe and set itself a deadline next year of February 1, when the Union Budget is usually announced, to check whether its demand for a sharp duty reduction in imported electric vehicles (EVS) is accepted (the prognosis: highly unlikely).

Starlink, Musk's satellite broadband service, is also struggling. After initial aggressive moves, soliciting subscriptions at a steep $99 per customer, it turns out that Starlink has not yet applied for a Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite (GMPCS) licence, despite saying it would do so by January 31. Sunil Mittal's Bharti, Reliance Jio and the Tata group are competitors in this space, and Bharti has already won the first-mover advantage by acquiring a GMPCS licence.

Starlink set base in India in November last year but has suffered serial setbacks, principally because it had little understanding of the rules of the game in India. This much was clear after its head of Indian operations, Sanjay Bhargava, a colleague of Musk in PayPal, quit after four months citing citing "personal reasons". A few days before that, the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) had pulled up the company for violating Indian laws by accepting pre-bookings for its broadband service from customers without obtaining a licence. Starlink was forced to return subscriptions to over 5,000 customers.