SpaceX appointed Sanjay Bhargava as Starlink India Country Director. He previously worked with SpaceX founder Elon Musk on PayPal, the electronic payment company. Musk became one of PayPal’s co-founders when his 'X.com' online bank company merged with ‘Confinity’ payment system in 1999, the merged business was named PayPal. The company was acquired by eBay in 2002.

On Sunday evening, Musk shared that Sanjay Bhargava deserves credit for PayPal’s success. “Sanjay deserves a lot of credit for making X/PayPal succeed,” Musk wrote via Twitter in response to a TESMANIAN article about Starink rollout in India (linked below). “Now helping SpaceX serve rural communities in india. Much respect,” Musk said. "Thank you for giving me the opportunity. Very early days but we hope with the support of all of the amazing people in India, Starlink will play an important role in catalyzing rural development in India," Bhargava replied.

Sanjay deserves a lot of credit for making X/PayPal succeed. Now helping SpaceX serve rural communities in India. Much respect.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2021

Bhargava holds a bachelor degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and masters from the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad. He was part of the PayPal founding team and has been working on other projects in India since 2004. Bhargava is the developer behind PayPal's mechanism referred to as ‘random deposits’, which allows users to confirm their bank account by submitting details of the account linked to a PayPal account and receiving two random deposits of less than one dollar into that bank account, then the user types the deposit amount values to begin transactions. This allowed PayPal to rapidly scale up transactions with a method that does not involve paper, nor human assistance.

Bhargava started to work with the SpaceX's Starlink division on October 1st, he is tasked with expanding the satellite broadband service across India. According to an Indian report by ETTelecom, Bhargava was invited to work at Starlink by Musk himself. He told reporters that he had an hour-long conversation with Musk and that he agreed to collaborate on bringing Starlink internet service to his country. "He is very clear in his vision that broadband service providers of all shades, be it via satellites or mobile networks, have to collaborate with one another and not compete, to take high speed broadband to the underserved, and transform people's lives in India and around the world… more so, since the two technologies are totally different," Bhargave told reporters. Read about his plan to provide Starlink internet service in the previous TESMANIAN article: SpaceX Representatives Share Plan To Provide Starlink Internet To Rural India Communities

@elonmusk thank you for giving me the opportunity. Very early days but we hope with the support of all of the amazing people in India, Starlink will play an important role in catalyzing rural development in India.

— Sanjay Bhargava (@sbharg) November 1, 2021

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