Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani is selling 2.5% of Jio in India's biggest share sale

Mukesh Ambani's Jio Platforms will start meeting investors this month in the United States, Singapore, Hong Kong, London and West Asia, ahead of a listing targeted for November that bankers have valued at as much as $180 billion.

Bloomberg reported the plan, citing people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. Size, valuation and timing could still change.

What Ambani is actually selling is very little of it. Jio filed its draft prospectus with India's securities regulator on June 19 and received final observations on Aug. 28, the clearance a company needs to proceed. The offer covers up to 270 million shares, worth roughly 275 billion rupees, and it is entirely new stock rather than a sale by existing shareholders, which means every rupee raised goes into the company.

That works out at about 2.5% of the business.

Indian rules are why. Companies listing with a market value above 5 trillion rupees must offer shares worth at least 150 billion rupees but need dilute only 2.5% of their equity, and Jio is comfortably inside that bracket. At the top of the range bankers have proposed, 2.5% comes to about $4.3 billion, which would make it the largest initial public offering in Indian history, ahead of the $3.3 billion Hyundai Motor India raised in 2024.

It would also be the first time Reliance has floated a major business unit since Reliance Petroleum in 2006.

The company being valued at up to $180 billion is ten years old. Jio launched in 2016 by giving away data and voice calls, forced most of India's telecoms operators into consolidation or collapse, and now has 524 million subscribers. Bharti Airtel, its closest competitor, has about 450 million.

Airtel earns more from each of them. Its average revenue per user was 256 rupees against Jio's 211.4 in the quarter to September, which is the gap Jio has been closing since. Average revenue per user reached 213.7 rupees in the third quarter of the 2026 financial year, up 5.1% on the year before, and it is the number investors will watch because on a base that size, small movements produce large amounts of money.

Revenue rose 14.6% in the 2026 financial year to 1.47 trillion rupees, and profit grew 15%. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation carry a margin above 50%, which is unusual for a telecoms business and reflects how little Jio spends acquiring customers it already has.

Telecoms still generates 75% to 80% of the revenue, despite a decade of diversification into digital services, commerce, cloud and artificial intelligence.

The money is earmarked for 5G infrastructure, expanding the subscriber base and general corporate purposes, with reporting also pointing to debt reduction at Reliance Jio Infocomm, the operating subsidiary that runs the network.

Getting here took longer than Ambani wanted. He told Reliance shareholders in August 2025 that Jio would list in the first half of 2026. The timetable slipped when conflict involving Iran soured sentiment early this year and delayed several large Indian offerings.

Inside the company the preparation ran under the name Project Jupiter.

The market receiving it has been weak. Indian equities have fallen more than 9% this year and slipped behind Taiwan and South Korea by total value, and investors have complained that India offers little exposure to the artificial intelligence trade lifting markets elsewhere.

Its listings have recovered anyway. Indian offerings have raised close to $10 billion in 2026 against more than $20 billion in each of the two record years before, but third-quarter proceeds of roughly $5.8 billion already exceed everything raised in the first half.

Jio has been taking outside money since 2020, from KKR, General Atlantic, Silver Lake and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, alongside strategic investments from Google, Meta and Nvidia. Half the offer goes to institutions, at least 35% to retail investors and at least 15% to wealthy individuals, with a reservation for existing Reliance shareholders.