Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Jio sets $3.1 billion IPO, India's largest ever

Jio Platforms Ltd., the telecom and digital arm of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd., filed its red herring prospectus on Wednesday for what is set to be India's largest initial public offering, with the share sale opening to the public on Oct. 21.

The company set a price band of 1,065 rupees to 1,119 rupees ($11.01 to $11.57) a share, according to the Economic Times. The offer is made up entirely of new shares, up to 270 million of them, and would raise about 28,755 crore rupees ($2.97 billion) at the bottom of the range and about 30,213 crore rupees ($3.12 billion) at the top.

At the upper end, Jio would be valued at about 10.3 trillion rupees ($106.5 billion), the newspaper reported, and analysts put the market value after the new shares are issued at about 10.4 trillion rupees ($107.5 billion). The top of the band prices Jio at about 34.6 times its consolidated earnings for the year ended March 2026.

The anchor book for large institutional investors opens on Oct. 19. The public offer runs from Oct. 21 to Oct. 23, and the shares are expected to begin trading on Oct. 28, according to Reuters and The Tech Portal.

The offering would top Hyundai Motor India Ltd.'s 27,870 crore rupee IPO in October 2024, which raised about $3.3 billion at the time and remains the country's biggest. Hyundai's deal had displaced the 2022 listing of state-run Life Insurance Corp. of India as the record.

No existing investors are selling

Because the IPO is a primary issue only, none of Jio's backers are cashing out. Reliance owns about two-thirds of Jio Platforms, with a 66.43% stake before the offer, according to the draft prospectus as summarized by DSIJ. Meta Platforms Inc.'s Jaadhu Holdings holds 9.98%, Google International holds 7.73%, and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and KKR-linked entities each hold 2.31%. Silver Lake, Mubadala and General Atlantic are also shareholders.

Most of those investors bought in during 2020, when Jio raised more than $20.5 billion from 13 global investors for roughly a third of the company. The Economic Times said most outside investors came in at an equity valuation of about 4.91 trillion rupees, meaning the IPO price is more than double their entry level.

Up to 27,500 crore rupees ($2.84 billion) of the proceeds will be used to repay or prepay borrowings at Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., Jio's mobile network unit, with the rest set aside for general corporate purposes. The company has reserved up to 500 crore rupees ($51.7 million) of shares for employees and up to 2,500 crore rupees ($258.5 million) for individual shareholders of Reliance Industries who held the stock as of Oct. 14.

Jio has hired 19 banks for the deal, including Kotak Mahindra Capital, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Axis Capital, BNP Paribas and Citigroup, Bloomberg reported.

Valuation falls short of earlier estimates

The price is lower than many had expected. Reuters reported last week that the valuation is below the roughly $131 billion anticipated in June, when Jio filed its draft papers, and some earlier estimates ran as high as $170 billion. Analysts told Reuters the lower pricing reflected a broader market correction tied to a spike in crude oil prices linked to the Iran war. India's Nifty 50 index has fallen about 6% since June.

Demand from large investors appears strong. Bloomberg reported this week that the anchor book is expected to draw more than $20 billion in bids, citing people familiar with the matter, and named Fidelity, Allianz and Capital Group among the interested funds. Reliance and Fidelity did not respond to Bloomberg's requests for comment, while Allianz and Capital Group declined to comment.

Akash Ambani, Mukesh Ambani's son and Jio Platforms' managing director since April, is leading the deal. He held investor meetings in Hong Kong, London and New York in recent weeks, according to Business Today, which cited the Bloomberg report.

In the unofficial grey market, Jio shares were trading at a premium of about 220 rupees, or roughly 20% above the top of the price band, the Economic Times reported. Paresh Bhagat, chairman of Mangal Keshav Financial Services, told the newspaper, "We view the pricing as reasonably fair," while adding that investors "must also account for the capital-intensive nature of telecom operations."

Reliance Jio Infocomm is India's largest mobile operator, with 524.4 million customers as of March. In the year ended March 2026, Jio Platforms' revenue from operations rose 14.6% to 1.47 trillion rupees ($15.2 billion), and profit increased 15.1% to 30,049 crore rupees ($3.11 billion), Reuters reported.

A listing at the top of the range would make Jio one of India's four most valuable listed companies, behind Reliance Industries, Bharti Airtel Ltd. and HDFC Bank Ltd., according to Reuters. It would follow the September debut of the National Stock Exchange of India, which raised $2.3 billion.

Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, has a net worth of $80.2 billion, according to Forbes' real-time billionaires list as of Oct. 13, ranking him 25th in the world.

Rupee figures were converted at 96.71 rupees per U.S. dollar.