India’s second-richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is launching what could be the country’s biggest-ever initial public offering (IPO), pushing ahead with the mega share sale despite a downturn in the stock market.
Jio Platforms, the Mumbai-based telecoms company backed by Meta Platforms and Google, is aiming to raise up to 302bn rupees (£2.4bn) when it floats on the stock market from Wednesday. It is targeting a valuation of 10.3tn rupees, which would make it India’s fourth-largest listed company.
Set up a decade ago as a subsidiary of Ambani’s conglomerate Reliance Industries, Jio is led by Akash Ambani, the eldest son of the family patriarch, and provides low-cost broadband to millions of Indians. Shares will be offered to retail investors from Wednesday, with the IPO set to close on Friday.
Jio secured commitments from 212 anchor investors on Monday ahead of the blockbuster listing, drawing support from some of the world’s largest fund managers, including BlackRock, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Fidelity Investments, Schroders, JP Morgan Asset Management, Franklin Templeton, Invesco and Prudential.
Reliance Industries said in a stock exchange filing last week that Jio had set a price range of 1,065 rupees to 1,119 rupees a share for its maiden share sale, offering up to 270m new shares. The family-owned conglomerate has also been encouraging its 400,000-plus employees to buy in, offering them a discount of 54 rupees a share.
At the top end of the price range, Jio would be worth 10.3tn rupees, ranking behind only its parent Reliance Industries, Bharti Airtel and HDFC Bank. That would be more than double the 4.9tn-rupee valuation the company commanded in 2020, when Meta and Google invested in the business. Even so, the top valuation falls far short of initial expectations of more than £110bn, set when the telecoms group filed its draft prospectus in the summer.
The listing comes amid a broader slowdown in India’s stock market, with the blue-chip Nifty 50 index down more than 12% this year.
Jio launched its telecoms services in September 2016 and rapidly transformed the market, gaining 16 million subscribers in its first month and topping 100 million within 170 days, according to Reliance Industries. The company is widely credited with making mobile internet more affordable by triggering a price war, and now plans to expand further into artificial intelligence, cloud computing and digital infrastructure.
Isha Ambani, who sits on Jio’s board as a director, told investors last week that the business idea was born from the poor connectivity she and her brother Akash faced when they returned to India on a break from studying in the US around 2009-10. She said she struggled to submit a college assignment online because the internet was not working.
“What followed was a conversation about why should India be left behind,” she said. “Akash firmly believed that the answer and solution to this was creating a digital technology platform company.”
Original Source: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/oct/20/mukesh-ambani-jio-platforms-ipo-india-stock-market
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Publish Date: 2026-10-21 04:27:00
