Jio Platforms Ltd filed its red herring prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India on Wednesday for an initial public offering (IPO) that is likely to raise around ₹30,200 crore, or about $3.2 billion, at the upper end of the ₹1,069-1,119 price band announced per share.
The company has not cut the number of shares on offer, with the IPO set still at 270 million new shares.
Jio Platforms, the digital services arm of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), houses its telecom, digital applications and technology businesses, including Reliance Jio Infocomm, India’s largest telecom service provider.
The revised issue size is about 14% lower than the roughly ₹35,000 crore that was proposed in the draft papers.
The subscription opens on 21 October and closes on 23 October. Shares are scheduled to begin trading on the exchanges on 28 October.
Despite the reduction, the IPO is set to be India’s biggest ever in rupee terms, surpassing Hyundai Motor India’s ₹27,870 crore share sale in 2024. The monies raised in US dollar terms by the Korean carmaker was a record $3.3 billion, a shade higher than the proposed Jio share sale, given the rupee traded at roughly 84 to a dollar in October 2024.
The Jio prospectus noted that tnvestors can bid in lots of 12 shares of face value of ₹10 each and in multiples of 12 shares thereafter. The company has also announced a discount of ₹54 per equity share for eligible employees bidding under the employee reservation portion.
Smaller offering
“While the shares on offer remain the same, the offer size has been reduced slightly after conversations with domestic mutual funds,” a person directly involved in the deal said, requesting anonymity. “This ensures that there is enough left on the table [after listing] in terms of valuation and growth potential.”
The share sale comes at a time that India’s equity markets are choppy. The benchmark Nifty 50 index fell for an eighth consecutive week in the week ended 1 October, marking its longest losing streak in 25 years. The index has declined more than 13% so far this year, as the Iran-US war disrupted crude oil supplies and drove up prices, while US tariffs and sanctions weighed on global trade.
According to the prospectus, the company plans to use up to ₹27,500 crore of the IPO proceeds to prepay certain borrowings of its material subsidiary, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL), in line with its original plan.
The filing follows investor roadshows in major markets, including the US, the UK, Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore, by executives Akash Ambani and Isha Ambani, children of billionaire Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries.
Currently, RIL holds a 66.43% stake in Jio Platforms, while Meta Platforms owns 9.98% through affiliate Jaadhu Holdings LLC, and Google International LLC 7.73%.
KKR & Co and Vista Equity Partners Management LLC hold 2.31% each in Jio Platforms through affiliate funds. Silver Lake owns 1.88%, Mubadala Investment Co 1.85%, while General Atlantic and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority hold 1.34% and 1.16%, respectively.
Jio has appointed Kotak Mahindra Capital Co., Morgan Stanley India Co., BofA Securities India Ltd, Axis Capital Ltd, BNP Paribas, Citigroup Global Markets India Pvt. Ltd and Goldman Sachs (India) Securities, among others, as book running lead managers. These investment banks would run and control the IPO process, especially pricing, demand building, and allocation. The shares are proposed to be listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and BSE, according to the draft papers.
Jio Platforms reported a 15% year-on-year increase in net profit to ₹30,053 crore in FY26, while revenue rose 14.5% to about ₹1.47 trillion. Ebitda stood at ₹76,255 crore, translating into a margin of 51.9% of revenue.
Telco Reliance Jio Infocomm maintained a lead over Bharti Airtel as India’s largest telecom company, with 508.43 million wireless mobile subscribers at the end of August, according to data from the country’s telecom regulator. Airtel had 491.60 million wireless mobile subscribers at the end of August, making it India’s second-largest mobile operator, while Vi had 199.57 million users.