SpaceX (SPCX) CEO Elon Musk said on Saturday that Starlink will be priced affordably in India, setting up a direct price fight with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio. Reuters reported the comments on Sunday, October 11. Jio Platforms is reportedly planning to open India’s largest-ever IPO on October 21, targeting a valuation of about $106 billion.
Musk gave no prices and no launch date. Starlink is still waiting on final security clearance from India’s government, and so is Jio’s own satellite venture.
Musk Is Taking Jio’s Playbook to Jio
“Obviously, if Starlink is too expensive in India, no one will buy it, so SpaceX will need to make pricing affordable,” Musk wrote on X, adding that Ambani’s profits would be lower but he would not go out of business.
The post capped a run of attacks. On Friday, Musk addressed Ambani as “Prime Minister Ambani” and accused the Modi government of stalling Starlink to protect Jio. India denies any bias.
Cheap data built Jio. Indian mobile data costs about $0.08 per gigabyte, among the lowest prices in the world, per Reuters.
Starlink Already Trades Price for Subscribers
SpaceX’s second-quarter results show “affordable” is already the strategy:
- Starlink subscribers doubled to 12 million.
- Average revenue per user (ARPU) fell 22% to $66 a month, from $85 a year earlier (management cited expansion into new geographies).
- Consumer revenue still rose 44% to $2.49 billion.
Consumer was about 32% of SpaceX’s $7.81 billion in quarterly revenue. Adding Enterprise & Government’s $1.81 billion brings Starlink-related connectivity to about 55%.
Volume has beaten price so far.
India Is a Different Kind of Cheap
The objection is scale. Jio counted 524.4 million customers in March, roughly 44 times Starlink’s global base, at prices built for $0.08 data. If Starlink’s Indian subscribers generate less than its current $66 monthly average, they would put downward pressure on global ARPU, all else equal. Musk hasn’t announced pricing yet.
Enterprise & Government revenue more than doubled in the quarter, and Musk has said he expects it to eventually exceed consumer revenue. So a cheap consumer tier in India doesn’t have to carry the Starlink story, but it would dilute the part of it investors track most closely.
The Price Starlink Hasn’t Named in India
The open question is the number. Priced near its current global average, Starlink stays a rural and premium product in India that barely touches Jio. A lower-priced Indian service could add subscribers while reducing blended ARPU, but its revenue contribution would depend on pricing and uptake.
Musk has framed it as a fight, but he hasn’t set the terms. That matters most for Reliance Industries (RELIANCE), which owns 66.43% of Jio Platforms going into the IPO.
Bharti Airtel (BHARTIARTL) sits on both sides. It signed a Starlink distribution deal in March 2025, but its home broadband business (Homes Services) grew revenue 37% to ₹21.91 billion in the quarter ended March 31, and that’s the market a cheap Starlink would chase.
Investors considering Jio’s planned IPO will be assessing a rival whose Indian pricing hasn’t been announced.
The segment split above is one screen on TIKR. You can pull up SpaceX’s segment revenue, along with Reliance and Airtel’s numbers, and see how the Starlink story stacks up quarter by quarter, for free. Learn more here.
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