Analysis
Reliance Industries disclosed a price band of ₹1,065 to ₹1,119 per share (about $11.19 to $11.76) for the IPO of Jio Platforms, its digital arm, in a stock exchange filing Wednesday. At the top of that band, the offering of up to 270 million new shares would raise as much as $3.2 billion and value the company at roughly ₹10.3 trillion -- about $108.3 billion -- making it the largest IPO in India's history, according to TechCrunch. Kotak Neo separately reported the same price band, with listing targeted for October 28. Pulse has previously covered Jio's push into AI-driven consumer products, a separate track from this IPO.
## How did Jio get from $65B to a $108B IPO? Jio Platforms launched in 2016 under Mukesh Ambani and built India's largest telecom network, now serving more than 524 million subscribers as of March 31, before expanding into broadband, cloud and other digital services. In 2020, Meta invested $5.7 billion and Google put in $4.5 billion as part of a round that drew more than $20 billion from outside investors and valued Jio at roughly ₹4.91 trillion, about $65 billion at the time. The new price band implies a valuation nearly 67% higher six years later, driven less by a single new product than by steady subscriber growth and rising revenue per user across broadband and cloud.
Jio competes most directly with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea in India's telecom market, both of which have spent the past two years raising capital of their own to defend market share against Jio's pricing and bundling. None of the three has yet matched Jio's scale in combined telecom-plus-digital-services revenue, which is the core of the pitch to IPO investors.
“None of the three has yet matched Jio's scale in combined telecom-plus-digital-services revenue, which is the core of the pitch to IPO investors.”
## The numbers in context In the quarter ended June, Jio's revenue rose nearly 12% to ₹391.7 billion (about $4.1 billion) and net profit rose 9% to ₹77.6 billion (around $816 million) -- growth that's solid but not the kind of hypergrowth that usually justifies a near-70% valuation markup on its own. A meaningful share of the step-up reflects multiple expansion in Indian public markets for large-cap tech and telecom names generally, not just Jio-specific execution. Reliance has set aside up to ₹25 billion (about $263 million) for its own existing shareholders and ₹5 billion (about $53 million) for employees, who get a ₹54-per-share discount -- a sign the company wants broad retail participation, not just anchor-investor demand, to carry the book.
What the headline number misses is where the money goes: up to ₹275 billion (about $2.9 billion) of proceeds will repay debt at subsidiary Reliance Jio Infocomm, with the remainder for general corporate purposes. That's a balance-sheet cleanup ahead of a listing, not fresh capital for network buildout or international expansion -- worth separating from the growth narrative built around the $108 billion figure.
For GPs and LPs tracking the India IPO pipeline, the schedule is tight: anchor investor bidding opens October 19, the public subscription window runs October 21 to 23, and a Red Herring Prospectus is already linked to the filing. How the anchor book fills on day one -- whether with the global long-only funds that backed Jio's 2020 private round or mostly domestic institutions -- will signal whether the ~$108 billion mark holds or needs a post-listing discount. Earlier reporting had pointed to a higher band near ₹1,150-₹1,220 per share, so the final number already reflects some pullback in ambition before the roadshow even started.
What to watch: whether Meta and Google, both Jio shareholders since 2020, participate again as anchor investors, and whether the IPO prices at the top of the band or needs to come in lower to clear -- the first real test of how much appetite remains for India's largest private tech asset going public.
