Jio targets up to $3.2 billion in an IPO that would be India's largest

Jio Platforms, the digital arm of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries, is seeking to raise as much as $3.2 billion in an initial public offering that would become India's largest to date, according to TechCrunch.

The terms of the offering

Citing a stock exchange filing by Reliance Industries, TechCrunch reports that Jio has set a price band of ₹1,065 to ₹1,119 (about $11.19 to $11.76) per share for an offering of up to 270 million new shares. Priced at the top of that band, the listing would value the company at roughly ₹10.3 trillion, or around $108.3 billion, based on the shares expected to be outstanding once the deal completes.

The subscription window opens on October 21 and closes on October 23, with bidding for anchor investors scheduled for October 19.

Jio has carved out shares worth up to ₹25 billion (about $263 million) for eligible Reliance Industries shareholders, plus another ₹5 billion (about $53 million) for employees, who will receive a discount of ₹54 per share.

According to the IPO prospectus, up to ₹275 billion (about $2.9 billion) of the proceeds will be used to repay debt at Jio's telecom subsidiary, Reliance Jio Infocomm, with the remainder going toward general corporate purposes.

Set to top Hyundai's record

TechCrunch notes that the offering would overtake Hyundai Motor India's ₹278.7 billion listing in 2024 — India's biggest IPO so far — even if Jio's shares are priced at the lower end of the band.

From budget data play to digital conglomerate

Since launching in 2016, Jio has grown into India's largest telecom operator, with more than 524 million subscribers as of March 31, putting it ahead of Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and state-owned BSNL. The company initially attracted customers with free data and cheap plans, though its prices are now broadly in line with those of its rivals, according to TechCrunch. Over time it has pushed beyond mobile telephony into broadband, cloud services and other digital businesses.

Its financial performance is growing at a moderate clip. In the quarter ended June, revenue rose nearly 12% from a year earlier to ₹391.7 billion (about $4.1 billion), while net profit climbed 9% to ₹77.6 billion (about $816 million), per the IPO prospectus.

The Starlink subplot

The listing arrives against a noisy backdrop. Elon Musk has stepped up public criticism of Ambani, accusing him of trying to keep SpaceX's Starlink out of India. The accusation comes more than a year after Jio and rival Airtel signed deals with Musk's SpaceX to distribute Starlink's satellite internet service in India, subject to regulatory approval. Indian authorities have rejected Musk's claims, TechCrunch reports.

Why it matters

This is a landmark test of whether public markets will underwrite India's telecom-digital conglomerates at the valuations private investors once accepted. In 2020, Jio attracted more than $20 billion from global backers including Meta, which invested $5.7 billion, and Google, which committed $4.5 billion — at a valuation of up to ₹4.91 trillion, about $65 billion at the time.

The IPO price band implies a valuation near $108 billion, a substantial step up from those 2020 marks. A strong reception would validate Reliance's strategy of stacking cloud, broadband and other digital services on top of a mass-market telecom business, and could open the door for other large Indian subsidiaries to follow Jio to the public markets. A weak one would raise questions about how much further India's IPO boom, which set records in 2024, can stretch. The plan to channel most proceeds into repaying debt at Reliance Jio Infocomm also signals that deleveraging, not expansion, is the immediate priority.