{"id":941454,"date":"2026-05-06T11:44:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T11:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/941454\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T11:44:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T11:44:27","slug":"reliance-eyes-billions-in-leo-satellites-to-build-indias-answer-to-starlink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/941454\/","title":{"rendered":"Reliance eyes billions in LEO satellites to build India’s answer to Starlink"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reliance Industries<\/a> is considering a big-bang entry into the satellite communications<\/a> space, involving a potential investment of billions of dollars, pitting the Mukesh Ambani-run conglomerate against Elon Musk-owned Starlink, Amazon Leo<\/a> and others, people aware of the details told ET.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe company wants to be one of the biggest players in the satellite space, particularly in the low earth orbit (LEO) segment, which has immense potential,\u201d said a person aware of details. The satellite arm will be housed in Jio Platforms<\/a> (JPL), which runs RIL\u2019s telecom and digital businesses.
Also Read: Reliance Industries to shut crude unit at 660,000 bpd refinery for maintenance, sources say<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Six teams have been formed to work on different aspects of the project, such as satellites, launches, payloads and user terminals, said the people cited.<\/p>\n

The move is of a piece with the government\u2019s aspiration for an Indian presence in the satcom business, particularly in LEOs, as dependence on overseas entities can have security implications, given the key role it\u2019s playing in conflicts.<\/p>\n

\"ETLive Events
Ambani spearheading project <\/b>
China has filed for the placement of 200,000 satellites across multiple LEO constellations at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Several other countries are also investing in the space segment, particularly LEOs, in a bid to safeguard their interests. \u201cWork has been (taking place) on a war footing for the past couple of months with meetings happening with different satellite technology firms<\/a> that can help in setting up the constellation,\u201d said a second person.
RIL has also started engaging with the department of telecommunications (DoT) to facilitate filing of orbital slots at ITU. The latter allocates orbital slots and radio frequencies for satellites. While Mukesh Ambani<\/a> is spearheading the project, other top executives are playing key roles, said the people cited.\"ScreenshotET Bureau
They include RIL president PK Bhatnagar, JPL chief executive Mathew Oommen and JPL senior vice president Aayush Bhatnagar. RIL didn\u2019t respond to queries.<\/p>\n

\u201cOptions to have inorganic growth, like acquiring any satellite entity, which has orbital slots and infrastructure ready, are also being considered,\u201d said a third person. The person said all options are being examined as Jio will have to play catch up in the space, currently dominated by Starlink, with Amazon Leo emerging as a contender.<\/p>\n

Other rivals include Eutelsat OneWeb, AST SpaceMobile and Sateliot. The Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Group<\/a> is the second largest shareholder in Eutelsat, which is majority owned by the French government. Reliance Jio has a partnership with medium earth orbit satellite firm SES. Talks are currently exploratory in nature and no timelines on a launch or the investments entailed have been finalised.<\/p>\n

\u201cClarity will emerge in the coming months when all the options are being examined,\u201d said the first person cited. \u201cThe company may want to have LEO satellites<\/a> in place in two to four years,either by organic or inorganic means.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also Read: Reliance Industries to set up India\u2019s largest data centre cluster in Andhra Pradesh<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

The government and space regulator Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre<\/a> (IN-SPACe) are said to have discussed the feasibility of developing a domestic non-geostationary orbit satellite constellation during a January meeting.<\/p>\n

Having its own constellation will provide India with digital sovereignty<\/a>, security and data privacy,while also helping to secure critical infrastructure and taking care of surveillance needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reliance Industries is considering a big-bang entry into the satellite communications space, involving a potential investment of billions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":941455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[196532,58054,123073,262965,262963,262962,10135,10128,41494,262964,70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-941454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-amazon-leo","9":"tag-bharti-group","10":"tag-digital-sovereignty","11":"tag-indian-national-space-promotion-and-authorisation-centre","12":"tag-jio-platforms","13":"tag-leo-satellites","14":"tag-mukesh-ambani","15":"tag-reliance-industries","16":"tag-satellite-communications","17":"tag-satellite-technology-firms","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-space","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116527463585146780","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}