When Jio Platforms Ltd. begins trading on Wednesday, its $107 billion valuation will put a price on several bets at once: Mukesh Ambani’s wager that cheap data could underpin the digital economy of 1.5 billion people; Google and Meta Platforms Inc.’s decision to back him; and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s digital push.

Elon Musk should watch closely. The potential rival to Jio in satellite broadband has suggested that Ambani’s rise owes something to crony capitalism. That explanation misses the more useful lesson for any global company trying to crack a market that has long been hard to read and tougher to profit from: In Modi’s India, the surest route to commercial success increasingly runs through the government’s strategic priorities.

Jio understood that early. Making connectivity cheap and ubiquitous wasn’t merely a commercial proposition; it served one of New Delhi’s central development goals. Reliance deployed billions of dollars of capital, drove data prices to among the world’s lowest and in the process amassed more than 500 million customers. The government got infrastructure it could never have financed as quickly on its own. Ambani got a market of extraordinary scale. That symbiosis shows the world how Indian capitalism works.

During Modi’s 12 years in office, the old idea that government has no business in business has given way to a much more muscular partnership between the state and private capital. Industrial policy has shifted from protecting small firms toward cultivating companies big enough to make enormous bets. The logic is that the state can’t finance India’s transformation alone, so it uses incentives, procurement, strategic investment, regulation and even coercion to draw private capital behind its goals.

The deal isn’t without risks. When commercial success depends heavily on alignment with government priorities, the line between industrial policy and favoritism becomes harder to ascertain. Companies with the capital, political access and patience to help New Delhi achieve its goals can acquire advantages that rivals struggle to match. That’s why Musk’s complaint resonates. But moaning about the system isn’t a strategy.

Foreign companies aren’t shut out. They simply have to understand what people of the world’s most populous nation want from them.

One route is to back a company already positioned at the center of a national priority. Meta, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and other investors put about $20 billion into Jio in 2020, while Covid was inflicting a massive economic cost and its cheap-data model was still being tested. They were betting on India’s digital transformation. Wednesday gives them their first opportunity to cash in.

The other route is harder: Behave like a national champion yourself. That doesn’t mean becoming Indian or cultivating political connections. It means bringing enough capital, technology and staying power to solve a problem the government considers important. And doing it at a price that works.

Foreign companies have long understood one part of that equation. McDonald’s Corp. embraced vegetarians and created the McAloo Tikki Burger. Hyundai Motor Co. designed cars with Indian consumers in mind. Samsung Electronics Co. adapted appliances to local habits. Chevrolet, Datsun and Carrefour SA, by contrast, are reminders that global scale and a famous brand don’t guarantee success. A product with cult status elsewhere doesn’t amount to a hill of beans if it doesn’t solve an Indian problem at a local price.

Under Modi, however, localization isn’t enough. The more consequential question is which national priority your investment serves.

For Jio, the answer was digital connectivity. For other companies it might be electronics manufacturing, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, renewable energy or defense. New Delhi has made increasingly clear where it wants capital and technology deployed. Companies that can align their commercial ambitions with those goals start with an advantage.

Alignment only gets you started, though. Jio’s next phase — rolling out its digital offering and launching 1,600 satellites — will expose it to market realities that no national-champion status can shield it from: technological disruption, changing consumer behavior and regulatory setbacks. It must deliver margins that satisfy shareholders without abandoning the cheap data prices on which its empire was built. A public listing will only increase that pressure. Which brings us back to Musk.

Could Starlink succeed in India, even against Jio? Certainly. But permission to sell satellite broadband won’t be enough. Starlink would need to convince both New Delhi and Indian customers that its commitment is durable rather than transactional. It would need an Indian operation capable of delivering even if US policy shifts, as my colleague David Fickling has written. And it would have to pair high-quality service with Indian-level prices and sustain that commitment for years, perhaps on negligible profits.

If Musk can do all that, Starlink can compete with Jio. But that would require something harder than winning a license or proving that his technology is superior. He would have to stop treating India simply as a market to enter and start treating it as a national project.