By Radarr Africa Business Desk
LAGOS, October 27 (Radarr Africa) – Jio Platforms, the telecoms and digital arm of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance group, is due to begin trading in Mumbai on Wednesday after a $3.2 billion initial public offering (IPO), the largest in India’s history, drew record demand, Reuters and Billionaires Africa reported.
Reuters said public subscriptions exceeded 13 times the shares on offer when bidding closed on Friday, October 23, and that demand topped $30.5 billion if bids were placed near the top of the price band. Billionaires Africa, citing the final tally, reported the public portion at 22.19 times covered, with total bids of more than $77 billion, and said about 13.9 million applications were received. The two reports use different figures, and neither explained the gap.
Reuters said the IPO attracted more than 12 million applications, the most for any offering in India, ahead of the $8.6 billion listing of Chinese chipmaker CXMT, which drew about 9.4 million accounts. The offering was fully subscribed within two hours of opening on Wednesday, October 21, according to Reuters.
On Reuters’ count, the institutional portion was covered 35 times, the retail tranche 2.48 times, the employee quota 2.77 times and the quota for existing Reliance shareholders 7.16 times. Billionaires Africa reported that qualified institutional buyers bid for 70.55 times the shares reserved for them.
The price band tops out at 1,119 rupees ($11.79) a share, and the top of the range values Jio at up to $108.3 billion, Reuters reported. Billionaires Africa said the band is 1,065 to 1,119 rupees and that the offering comprises up to 270 million new shares, raising up to 302.13 billion rupees. It said Reliance is selling none of its own shares and that about 275 billion rupees ($2.9 billion) will be used to repay debt at Reliance Jio Infocomm.
Anchor investors including the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, BlackRock and Fidelity bid for a reserved $854 million of shares on Monday, October 19, drawing bids of more than $25 billion, Reuters said. Billionaires Africa put the anchor bids at $25.6 billion. It said trading begins on October 28 on the BSE and NSE.
Analysts see strong investor appetite. “Triggering a lot of exuberance and euphoria for the stock,” Kranthi Bathini, equity strategist at WealthMills Securities, said of the offering, according to Reuters. Billionaires Africa quoted analyst Ambareesh Baliga as saying a heavily oversubscribed IPO “cannot guarantee a strong debut.”
Jio’s mobile network serves more than 500 million users, Reuters said, and Billionaires Africa put its subscribers at more than 533 million as of June. For the year to March 31, 2026, Jio’s revenue rose 14.6 per cent to 1.5 trillion rupees ($15.8 billion) and net profit rose 15 per cent to 300 billion rupees ($3.2 billion), the latter outlet reported.
Before the offering, Reliance owned 66.4 per cent of Jio, with Meta holding about 10 per cent and Google about 8 per cent, according to Billionaires Africa. Reuters said Reliance shares have returned about 900 per cent since 2006, against 685 per cent for the Nifty index, citing LSEG data. Billionaires Africa said Reliance shares closed at 1,190 rupees on Friday, about 26 per cent below their 52-week high of 1,611.20 rupees.
Reuters said the offering is led by Akash Ambani and that Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google are investors in Jio.
