Jio Platforms raises ₹81.1 billion from 212 anchor investors, led by LIC, before its record IPO

Jio Platforms, the telecom and digital arm of Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries, allotted 72.47 million shares to 212 anchor investors at ₹1,119 each on Monday, Oct. 19, raising ₹81.1 billion two days before its initial public offering opens to everyone else, the company told India's stock exchanges.

Who got the shares

Life Insurance Corp. of India received the biggest allocation: 4.47 million shares worth ₹5 billion, or 6.17% of the anchor portion, according to the list Jio sent to BSE and the National Stock Exchange of India. New World Fund Inc. was next at 6%, worth ₹4.86 billion. The Government of Singapore was allotted 4.2%, worth ₹3.41 billion, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore another 1.04%. BNP Paribas Financial Markets received 3.74%, worth ₹3.03 billion.

Indian mutual funds took 34.34% of the anchor shares, worth ₹27.85 billion, through 95 schemes run by 25 fund houses. HDFC Flexi Cap Fund alone received 1.63%, and Mint reported that SBI Focused Fund's allocation was worth ₹3.15 billion. Life insurers and pension funds took 13.44%, worth ₹10.9 billion, across 22 accounts led by LIC and HDFC Life.

Global asset managers spread their orders across many funds. Fidelity Contrafund received 1.52%, worth ₹1.23 billion, and BlackRock took shares through several of its Global Funds vehicles. Mint and Moneycontrol also listed Capital Group, T. Rowe Price, Schroders, JPMorgan Asset Management and Franklin Templeton among the anchors.

Indian institutions took nearly half

Under the offer's prospectus and Indian market rules, at least 40% of the anchor portion was set aside for Indian institutions, provided they bid at or above the allocation price: 33.33% for domestic mutual funds and 6.67% for life insurers and pension funds, the company's letter says. They ended up with 47.78% between them, by TickerGrove's calculation, well above that floor. The remaining 52.22% went to other investors, including foreign fund managers and Singapore's state investors.

How much demand there was

Jio's letter lists only the winning allocations, not the size of the order book. Bids for the anchor shares totaled about $25 billion, almost 30 times the amount set aside, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Moneycontrol, which first reported the demand figure, put it at nearly ₹2.5 trillion, or Rs 2.5 lakh crore in Indian notation. Reliance did not respond to Reuters' request for comment.

Every anchor paid ₹1,119 a share, the top of the ₹1,065-to-₹1,119 price range. That price includes a premium of ₹1,109 over each share's ₹10 face value, the letter says. The ₹81.1 billion raised is about $855 million at the exchange rate implied by Reuters' figures.

What is left for everyone else

The anchors took about 27% of the 270 million new shares Jio is selling, by TickerGrove's calculation. That leaves 197.5 million shares for bidding from Wednesday, Oct. 21, to Friday, Oct. 23, according to the NSE's post-anchor issue parameters. At least 85 million are set aside for retail investors and at least 36.4 million for non-institutional investors. Up to 49 million go to other qualified institutional buyers, up to 4.69 million to eligible employees and up to 22.3 million to eligible Reliance shareholders, all counted at the top of the price range. Bids come in lots of 12 shares, and retail investors can bid up to ₹200,000 each.

All of the money goes to the company. Jio plans to use up to ₹275 billion of the net proceeds to repay or prepay borrowings of its telecom unit, Reliance Jio Infocomm, according to Reuters and Moneycontrol.

Why the listing matters

At the top of the range the full sale would raise about ₹302 billion, by TickerGrove's calculation, making it India's largest IPO in rupee terms, as Moneycontrol and Mint noted. Reuters described the listing as a test of what global investors will pay for Jio's scale and its push into cloud and AI. A successful offer would put Jio among India's four most valuable listed companies, behind Reliance, Bharti Airtel and HDFC Bank, Reuters reported. It would also be Reliance's first share sale since it listed Reliance Petroleum in 2006, and it follows the National Stock Exchange's own listing in September.