SpaceX's Starlink is planning to roll out 200,000 user terminals in India, as Elon Musk's satellite internet company seeks to go big in Asia

• Elon Musk's SpaceX said it wants to deploy 200,000 Starlink user terminals in India by December 2022.
• Starlink's director in India said Monday that the company had set up a wholly-owned India subsidiary.

SpaceX's satellite internet network, Starlink, wants to roll out 200,000 user terminals in India in an effort to expand its service in Asia, according to a company presentation.

Starlink has set up a wholly-owned subsidiary in India called Starlink Satellite Communications Private, the company's India director, Sanjay Bhargava, wrote in a LinkedIn post Monday.

Bhargava, a former PayPal executive, said in the post that the subsidiary can now apply for licenses and open bank accounts.

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The subsidiary has a "stretch goal" to deploy 200,000 Starlink user terminals in more than 160,000 rural districts in India by December 2022, per a company presentation that Bhargava shared on LinkedIn last week.

The user terminals, which connect to the Starlink satellites, are part of the $499 kit users buy after signing up to the $99-a-month internet service.

The company presentation showed that Starlink wants to introduce its internet to schools in and near to the capital city of New Delhi, too.

"We want to serve the underserved," Bhargava wrote.

Bhargava previously worked with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to create PayPal, according to Bhargava's LinkedIn profile.

Musk tweeted on Monday: "Sanjay deserves a lot of credit for making X/PayPal succeed. Now helping SpaceX serve rural communities in India. Much respect."

Starlink is also in talks with two telecommunications companies in the Philippines, where it also wants to launch its satellite service, Bloomberg first reported on Friday.

There are currently more than 1,650 Starlink satellites in orbit. The company's goal is to have 42,000 by mid-2027 in order to create an internet service which stretches across the world.

Starlink was supposed to come out of beta-testing mode in October, Musk tweeted in September, which would allow further expansion of the network. It's not clear whether Starlink has exited its beta phase but Insider verified that Starlink's homepage had references to beta testing before Thursday. The references have since disappeared.