Cost is everything in spaceflight and SpaceX has cracked the cost barrier wide open. Even in Russia where they can build rockets out of the same factories they've been using for decades and where labor can be dirt cheap they can't match the costs that SpaceX is capable of, nor can China.
And this is largely because the company is entirely commercial. They build rockets and spacecraft to their own specs not based on government contracts and to government rules and specifications. They have built an entire orbital launch vehicle which is competitive in capabilities to the Ariane 5, the Delta IV, the Atlas V, and the Proton M, all of which took enormous government programs and billions of dollars to develop. SpaceX build their rocket from scratch for less than half a billion dollars all told. That is revolutionary.
More so, they are only the 4th entity in the world who has succeeded in any degree in creating and launching an orbital spacecraft that is capable of being manned and they are almost certain to be the first non-government entity in history to launch astronauts into orbit.
And that is just the prelude. They are also working on the Falcon Heavy, which will provide extra capability and far lower costs than the Falcon 9. And they are working on a fully reusable launch vehicle from the 1st stage up through the crew capsule, which would revolutionize manned spaceflight in a way that we can scarcely imagine today.
The PSLV has about 1/3 the payload of the Falcon 9. On paper it's roughly cost competitive with Soyuz and the current Falcon 9 prices (which is no coincidence, there's little advantage to undercutting the competition, yet). In practice though it's not a serious competitive threat to any existing launcher because it has such a low payload capacity and thus can't be used to launch the vast majority of satellites.
And this is largely because the company is entirely commercial. They build rockets and spacecraft to their own specs not based on government contracts and to government rules and specifications. They have built an entire orbital launch vehicle which is competitive in capabilities to the Ariane 5, the Delta IV, the Atlas V, and the Proton M, all of which took enormous government programs and billions of dollars to develop. SpaceX build their rocket from scratch for less than half a billion dollars all told. That is revolutionary.
More so, they are only the 4th entity in the world who has succeeded in any degree in creating and launching an orbital spacecraft that is capable of being manned and they are almost certain to be the first non-government entity in history to launch astronauts into orbit.
And that is just the prelude. They are also working on the Falcon Heavy, which will provide extra capability and far lower costs than the Falcon 9. And they are working on a fully reusable launch vehicle from the 1st stage up through the crew capsule, which would revolutionize manned spaceflight in a way that we can scarcely imagine today.