The head of Starlink India, Sanjay Bhargava has stepped down from his role. The development comes weeks after the Indian government ordered the SpaceX division to stop taking orders for the devices as it doesn’t have the license to operate in the South Asian market.
His departure comes just three months after he took the job as country director and chairman of the board of Starlink India. Earlier today, Starlink India told customers that it will be issuing refunds to those who had preordered the device.
Bhargava announced his departure in a LinkedIn post, where he said he was leaving the firm for “personal reasons.”
Elon Musk, SpaceX chief executive, welcomed Bhargava, a former PayPal executive, last year to Starlink India and tweeted that he “deserved a lot of credit for making X/PayPal succeed.”
Starlink, which has shipped more than 100,000 terminals to customers, shared big ambitions for India last year. The company has plans to deploy over 200,000 active terminals in over 160,000 districts in India by the end of December 2022, Bhargava said earlier.
The firm began taking preorders for Starlink terminals in the country last year and over 7,000 people signed up. Starlink was working with local influential think tank Niti Aayog to identify districts in India to conduct trials for the device.
However, in late November, the Indian government ordered Starlink to stop “booking/rendering the satellite internet service” in the country without first obtaining the license. Indian telecom regulator TRAI also asked Starlink to “desist from soliciting telecom business and collecting related fees” without securing the relevant authorizations.
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