Starlink can keep internet service going in Ukraine during wartime. It can move hardware into the Amazon Rainforest. The company can overcome all sorts of challenges to bring its high-speed satellite internet connection all over the world, but red tape has kept it from going live in India for three years.
The Department of Telecommunications gave Starlink a GMPCS licence—that’s a Global Mobile Personal Communications by Satellite licence—in early June, but there’s one snag. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, or Trai, has capped satellite spectrum licences at five years, with a possible two-year extension. Starlink wants 20.
On top of that, Elon Musk’s satellite internet service still needs to clear a checklist of requirements: spectrum allocation timelines, clearance from IN-SPACe (the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre), testing windows. And then there’s spectrum assignment, approvals for ground stations, and terminal certifications. The list goes on.
That means Starlink is still many months away from rolling out commercial service in India.
Compare this with the company’s progress elsewhere. Starlink inked a distribution and integration partnership with Airtel Africa in May. It secured commercial licences in nine countries within weeks, with five more sets of approvals under process. It cleared that much ground in the time it took to get once licence in India.
The Ken’s head of editorial desk Sumit Chakraborty dived into the details in this week’s edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Deputy Editor Seetharaman G.
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2024 was a record-breaking year for mergers and acquisitions in India, and the government seems to want to speed up the frenzy.
One of the proposals put forward by the finance minister was an overhaul of M&A regulations. She wants to introduce fast-track mergers for a range of companies, including unlisted firms and fellow subsidiaries.
But lethargy isn’t really the biggest problem afflicting Indian M&As. In fact, forcing these deals to move faster may worsen other fundamental problems. There are recent examples that show us how this can play out, such as Jet Airways’ failed revival under the Jalan Kalrock consortium.
Meanwhile, there are other incentive structures that can ensure M&As deliver great results.
Raghav Maggo explains what India’s M&A landscape needs in this week’s edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Brady Ng.
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If you were to think about the world’s most technologically advanced economies, a few nations come to mind. The United States has Silicon Valley as its cradle of innovation, China’s scientists and researchers develop state-of-the-art IP every day, and Japan remains a global leader in robotics, especially industrial automation.
India doesn’t register in that cluster.
A few figures show us present conditions in more detail. Thirty years ago, India spent 0.6% of its GDP on R&D. In 2025, it’s at the same rate. The share occasionally inched up to 0.8% between then and now, but this is still low compared to major global economies.
Why is that? Consider the US: it has a dynamic private sector that pours capital into R&D. Meanwhile, that type of spending is anathema in India—trade trumps research, copying is preferred over invention.
The lack of R&D spending is in large part a mindset problem in private industry, government circles, and investors. For India to become an R&D powerhouse, there needs to be structural reforms.
Seema Singh explains in this week’s edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Snigdha Sharma.
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Wi-fi is a miracle. Not because it lets you go online wherever it’s offered, but because there’s no bureaucratic headache whenever users connect to a network.
This is only possible because of what’s called “unlicensed spectrum” that governments leave open. In India, more is about to be added to it. Call it the first real systemic reform for wi-fi in the country.
The plan is hardly new. It’s rooted in a roadmap developed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India in 2023. And it’s an outcome that tech companies like Meta, Google, and Microsoft have been lobbying hard for. After all, if the goal is to give hundreds of millions of people in India a fast internet connection wherever they are—at home or at bus stops, in schools or in shops—then licensed mobile networks just can’t do the whole job on their own.
But India’s telcos are not thrilled about this development. They want that space for future 5G expansions.
Sumit Chakraborty explains the conflict in this week’s Make India Competitive Again, as read by Brady Ng.
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There are plenty of reasons for India’s semiconductor companies to win. The US is seeking to dial back its reliance on China’s tech providers, shaking up global supply chains. Since one-fifth of global semiconductor-design talent is located in India, the country should be coming out on top.
But that isn’t how the shakeup is unfolding. Some projects like those of Murugappa Group, Micromax, and Tata Electronics are chugging along, but there are hardly any internationally noteworthy players.
Here’s one absent piece of the puzzle: there isn’t enough capital being directed into India’s semiconductor space. The government’s design-linked incentives, or DLI, are meant to kick-start the sector, but the funds simply aren’t enough to yield the results that would put India squarely on the map.
There are other problems too, from US President Donald Trump’s shenanigans to the fact that Indian firms still need to put in immense effort to convince customers that their chips can be just as good as anyone else’s.
It’s tough running a semiconductor company in India. Shristi Achar explains in the latest edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Brady Ng.
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The audio edition of The Ken’s Make India Competitive Again newsletter, spearheaded by Seetharaman G. Every Wednesday, our editors and reporters read the latest edition and chronicle what India is doing, will do, and should do—to not just survive but thrive in the chaos unleashed by Donald Trump.
