Jio Platforms' IPO, India's biggest in rupee terms, opens to anchor investors on Monday

Jio Platforms, the telecom and digital arm of Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries, takes orders from anchor investors on Monday for an initial public offering that would raise ₹302.1 billion at the top of its price range, the most any Indian IPO has raised in rupee terms.

The terms

Jio Platforms is selling up to 270 million new shares at ₹1,065 to ₹1,119 each, according to the price band posted on BSE. Anchor investors, the large institutions that commit before the public offer, bid on Monday, Oct. 19. The offer then opens on Wednesday, Oct. 21, and closes on Friday, Oct. 23, Reliance Industries said in an Oct. 14 filing to the stock exchanges. Bids come in lots of 12 shares, or ₹13,428 at the top of the range, and the prospectus says trading on the NSE and BSE should begin on or about Oct. 28.

At the top price the sale would raise ₹302.1 billion, and at the bottom ₹287.6 billion, by TickerGrove's calculation. Either figure would beat Hyundai Motor India's ₹278.6 billion offering in 2024, the current record in rupee terms, the Press Trust of India noted. In dollars, Jio's top-end haul of about $3.2 billion would still trail Hyundai's roughly $3.3 billion, CNBC reported.

Two slices are set aside: up to ₹5 billion for eligible employees of Jio Platforms, its subsidiaries and Reliance Industries, excluding the promoter group as the prospectus defines that term, and up to ₹25 billion for individuals and Hindu undivided families who were public shareholders of Reliance on Oct. 14, the date the prospectus was filed.

Nobody is cashing out

Hyundai Motor India's record offering was a sale of existing shares by its South Korean parent, and Life Insurance Corp. of India's was a sale by the Indian government, PTI noted. Jio's is new shares only, and the prospectus lists no offer for sale, so none of Reliance, Meta or Google is selling. The money goes to the company.

Most of it goes to debt. Jio plans to use up to ₹275 billion of the net proceeds to repay, in full or in part, borrowings of Reliance Jio Infocomm, its main operating subsidiary, with the rest for general corporate purposes. Jio's total borrowings stood at ₹613.7 billion on June 30, down from ₹707.8 billion at the end of March.

Reliance owns 66.43% of Jio before the offer. Jaadhu Holdings, a Meta affiliate, holds 9.98%, and Google International holds 7.73%. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and affiliates of KKR and Vista Equity Partners hold 2.31% each. Adding 270 million shares to the roughly 8.94 billion already outstanding would trim Reliance's stake to about 64.5%, by TickerGrove's calculation, if the full issue is sold.

What the price implies

At ₹1,119, the roughly 9.21 billion shares outstanding after the offer would be worth about ₹10.3 trillion, by TickerGrove's calculation, or around $108 billion by CNBC's estimate. That is about 33 times Jio's diluted earnings of ₹33.59 a share for the fiscal year that ended in March. CNBC noted the valuation would leave Jio below the market value of its main rival, Bharti Airtel, which it put at $117.5 billion using LSEG data.

Growth was a little slower in the latest quarter than in the full year. Revenue rose 14.6% to ₹1.47 trillion in fiscal 2026, and profit rose 15.1% to ₹300.5 billion, with a 51.91% EBITDA margin. In the quarter that ended June 30, revenue rose 11.8% to ₹391.7 billion and profit rose 9.2% to ₹77.6 billion, according to the prospectus. Jio served 533.3 million customers in India at the end of June, including 284.9 million on 5G, and 539.2 million by Aug. 31. Average monthly revenue per user was ₹215.6 in the June quarter, up from ₹208.8 a year earlier.

Bidders will not see the September-quarter numbers first. The prospectus says Jio will publish them as a listed company after trading begins, so investors will not have them when they decide.

How tied it stays to Reliance

The risk factors spell out how much of Jio runs through its parent's group. Reliance Retail is the sole distributor of Jio's prepaid connectivity services, which made up 77.08% of revenue in fiscal 2026. Jio also has service agreements with Reliance and other group companies, and it shares the Jio brand with them. The Ambani family remains in charge: Mukesh Ambani is chairman, Akash Ambani is managing director, and Isha and Anant Ambani sit on the board.

Monday's anchor book

Sovereign wealth funds including the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Qatar Investment Authority, GIC, Norges Bank Investment Management and Mubadala have sought places in the anchor round, along with BlackRock and FMR LLC and about 15 Indian fund houses, Mint reported on Oct. 15, citing four people familiar with the matter. The company has not confirmed any of those names; the Abu Dhabi fund and Norges declined to comment to Mint, and Reliance did not immediately respond. Nineteen banks are running the deal, including Kotak Mahindra Capital, Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan.