Context of the Dispute:-
The fight between Mukesh Ambani of India and Elon Musk of the United States has intensified. If you have been following this news for the last two-three days, then you would know that Mukesh Ambani has given a comment in which he said this It is said that India’s Telecom Regulatory Authority has taken the wrong decision that it will allocate satellite spectrum to parties and not auction it, whereas Mukesh Ambani wants this spectrum to also be auctioned and on the other hand, Musk believes that the Indian government
A procedure should be made by which this spectrum should be allotted to every company.
Government’s Stance:-
The Indian government gave clarification to this objection of Mukesh Ambani in a single day. Jyotiraditya Scindia, who is currently the Minister of Communication of India, made it clear that the government will use the satellite.
It will only allot the spectrum it has, there will be no option in it. This decision of the Indian government is a big blow for Mukesh Ambani who wants to become a satellite based internet service provider.
The Financial Stakes:-
It can be considered a fight between two billionaires. And the reason for this is very simple, the market of satellite services in space will reach 1.8 trillion dollars by 2030 and every billionaire wants a stake in it. Thanks to this clarification of Jyotir Aditya Scindia, Elon Musk said it the very next day. While thanking Scindia ji, he said that we will do our best to serve India with Star Link. Star Link is Elon Musk’s company which provides internet services. The Government of India accepted the words of Elon Musk and the demand of Mukesh Ambani.
Seeing that Mukesh Ambani was rejected, Mukesh Ambani must have been very worried because Mukesh Ambani believed that if there is an auction of spectrum then he would probably be able to get more spectrum because if there is allocation then such rules or processes will be made which will establish them.
Will be favoured, in which Elon Musk’s star link will come on top, Jeff Besos company will also come, Indian Airtel will also be there, in that case Mukesh Ambani will not be able to take much spectrum.
Company Star Link and India’s Reliance company Jio. We will see who has gone ahead in the fight to get the satellite spectrum, but it is very clear that whenever there is a fight between two corporates, the consumer always benefits.
Background of the Contenders:-
According to the Fab Real Time Billionaire Ranking, he is the 13th richest man in the world. His net worth is a little more than one trillion dollars. And his age is 67 years and the second person is Elon Musk of USA, his net worth is 2.47 trillion dollars i.e. Mukesh Ambani is almost two and a half times richer and his rank is number one i.e. the richest man in the world at present is Elon Musk and His age is 53 years. Before I start comparing these two groups, it is important to understand the fundamental or basic difference between the companies of Reliance Group and Elon Musk. You all will remember that the line was started in 1980.
Evolution of Their Companies:-
Dhiru Bhai Ambani first established a petrochemical and polyester filament manufacturing plant in Patal Ganga, Maharashtra, and by 1991, he had become the world’s largest polyester yarn manufacturer and with this he integrated Vimal. Lai had also started textile in the year 2000, he diversified and set up the largest green field petrochemical refinery in India in Jamnagar, Gujarat and in the year 2000 itself, Lai took his first step in Ifom, he laid optical fiber across the country and by 2002 Till then, Reliance became a big player in telecommunication or mobile services, then in 2006,Reliance stepped into retail and a company named Reliance Retail was started because Mukesh Ambani started giving petrochemicals to reliance1.
Even today, the company has made a lot of profits in reliance1. If you see in this chart, there is hardly any area where the media is everywhere.He either established a new company or bought an assisting company. On the other hand, Elon Musk is known for Tesla company. Tesla is a US company. It is a car manufacturing company which makes electric vehicles. He first started investing in this company and later became its chairman, after that he also introduced driverless vehicles in the same company.
Elon Musk was a native of South Africa but in 2002 Elon Musk, who became a citizen of the US in 1975, has had an extreme technical bent of mind since the beginning.
He always thinks ahead of technology. Just as Musk introduced driverless vehicles to the whole world, in the same way in 2002, he named Space The purpose of this company was to make rockets and to make different types of rockets in which the main purpose was to make such rockets which can be reused and you must have seen recently that last week they made a Reyu Jabal rocket.
Testing has also been done, Robot is another division of Tesla company. This is interesting because on October 11, Musk has introduced a robot which he has named Optimus and it is called Humanoid Optimus Robot. The special thing in this is that it When the robot interacts with people, it interacts exactly as if a human being is talking to you.
You can read more about this Optimus robot on Twitter. I will give its link here. If you go to the website of Space There are many of their products listed above, Falcon is not a rocket, Falcon Heavy is a rocket, Dragon Star Ship is preparing for human space flight, Right Share Star Shall and last is this star link which we will talk about today, Star Link is a company of Musk whose aim is to provide high speed internet wherever you are in the whole world.
Through a small satellite, you will get internet wherever you are in the world. You can install it on your house or on the road. Whether you are traveling on a plane or on a ship at sea, you get high speed internet. You will get internet connectivity in such places where you would never have thought that this facility would be available to you.
According to the feedback of the users of Starling, internet The speed they get ranges between about 25 to 220 Mbps and the average is 100 Mbps which is almost the same as the broadband available to you nowadays through optical fiber in your home and the upload speed is between 5 to 20 Mbps. Also, this is almost equivalent to the internet you get while sitting at home.
Starling service was launched in October 2020. Within the first two years, its subscribers increased from about nine million to 10 lakh.
Comparing Their Market Approaches:-
In the next one year, it increased to around 20 lakh. Reached and September 2024. Recently last month this number has increased to 4 million i.e. 40 lakhs. Starling’s revenue was 1.4 billion dollars in 2022 but was in loss.
A slight profit was shown in 2023 and this year in 2024. Its revenue will reach approximately 6.6 billion dollars and the company will become completely profitable. If you see which companies Elon Musk owns or where he has interests, then many of the names will seem familiar to you. Aerosmith from Pune to Bombay.
Technological and Strategic Advantages:-
This experiment of laying hyper loop in the middle of India had failed. Automotive Tesla in India. We have talked about energy, solar city, so in a way, Elon Musk is only into deep tech. Whatever sector he goes to, he only talks about technology. And such technology which can once shake up that sector which we call in English, compare the subscriber and revenue of reliance1 and subscriber base.
Reliance1 is run by the 1 year old son of Akash Ambani, he is the chairman of this company and Kiran Thomas is its chairman. The revenue of this company was about 14 billion dollars in 2023 and the profit was 2.4 billion dollars. The total asset of this company is currently 61 billion dollars. When J was launched in 2016, reliance1 grew very fast and in the very first year it crossed 100 million.
The Future Landscape:-
Jio has been continuously growing very fast and in this year 2024 it has reached around Rs 400 81 million. The company has crossed the revenue of Rs 1 crore in 20222 which has crossed Rs 1 32900 crore this year. Data traffic has gone, it has left China Telecom behind and the root of this fight or competition is that the space based communication market is going to be 1.8 trillion dollars in the next four-five years, so everyone wants a share in this market. Now let us compare Mukesh Ambani company Relay J and Lan Musk’s Starling and if we consider all the aspects, then you will understand what game is going on in India. First of all, if we talk about the revenue, Mukesh Ambani Lay Jio Previous The annual revenue was 12 billion dollars, subscriber base was 485 million and average revenue per user 100817 is approximately equal to 2.2. Now if we compare the revenue of Elon Musk’s Starling, then in 2023 the revenue of Starling was 2.4 billion dollars and the subscriber base was 2.2 million. The average user per revenue was 1826.
This year in 2024, it is expected that the revenue will increase to 6.6 billion dollars and the subscriber base will almost double to around 4 million.The figure for the average user per revenue is not given but I believe that maybe If it reaches around Rs. 10000, then on one side there is Mukesh Ambani, who has not left any business in the last 40-50 years. He started in petrochemicals, then went into telecom, then went into retail and today perhaps he has hundreds of companies which do different types of business.
Although Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance has its own infrastructure, its refinery is its own, its telecom infrastructure is its own, but when it comes to space, it has no presence. Space technology and a And the drawback that I see with Ly is that it is a family run business, although they have a large number of shareholders but still the complete control remains in the family.
Conclusion: Consumer Benefits from Competition:-
On the other hand, Elon Musk has been an entrepreneur, he has put his hands in many startups. He has set his feet and he is basically a technical person, he is a technocrat, his risk appetite is very high, unlike Mukesh Ambani, he is not afraid of failing in whatever ventures he has undertaken. The entire infrastructure of space equipment, you take the rocket, satellite, man manufacturing, take the ground.
Take the infrastructure, everything is made by Elon Musk’s own company, he has all the resources to control this technology and these services. If Elon Musk wants to increase his market and subscriber base, then India and China are important markets for him.
That’s why they want to come to India, although they will not get the same kind of revenue and users as they get outside, but their subscriber base will be so big that they can drop the prices and as far as investment capacity is concerned, which we call deep package, then both the groups He has deep pockets, he can go to any extent to acquire this business, but I believe that at this time Elon Musk has a slight advantage because he is the owner of the technology, he will not have to lease it from anyone.
More than 3000 of these satellites have already been launched, however Starling currently has more than 6000 satellites in orbit and it is believed that it will also come into the market after 2026.