Indian telecoms and digital services giant Jio Platforms has attracted more than $77 billion in bids for its initial public offering (IPO), making it the most subscribed stock offering in India’s history.
The IPO, backed by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, surpassed the previous record set by Reliance Power in 2008, highlighting strong investor demand for one of India’s most anticipated market listings in nearly two decades.
The offering is also being viewed as a test of investor appetite for large stock market listings at a time when technology companies linked to artificial intelligence are facing increased scrutiny.
Jio Platforms, part of Ambani’s Reliance Industries conglomerate, is valued at up to $108.3 billion through the offering. The valuation could place it among India’s largest publicly traded companies when its shares begin trading on Wednesday.
The company’s mobile network serves more than 500 million users across India. Its IPO has drawn significant interest from institutional investors, individual investors, employees and existing shareholders, with public subscriptions exceeding 22 times the shares available.
At the top of the price range, set at 1,119 rupees, or about $11.79 per share, demand would have exceeded $51.5 billion if most bids were placed at that level.
That demand came in addition to bids worth $25.6 billion from anchor investors, including the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, BlackRock and Fidelity. These investors were allocated shares worth $854 million.
A Reliance official told Reuters that the IPO received more than 13.8 million applications, setting a record for an Indian share offering. By comparison, Chinese memory chip maker CXMT’s $8.6 billion IPO, Asia’s largest this year, attracted about 9.4 million accounts.
Kranthi Bathini, an equity strategist at WealthMills Securities, attributed the enthusiasm partly to the rarity of a Reliance-backed IPO.
“This is a Reliance IPO after a long time, which is triggering a lot of exuberance and euphoria for the stock,” he said.
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Jio Platforms is led by Akash Ambani, Mukesh Ambani’s eldest son, who has taken a prominent role in the family’s business empire. The company counts Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and Google, owned by Alphabet, among its longstanding investors.
The IPO was fully subscribed within two hours of opening on Wednesday, an unusually rapid response in a market where investor demand for new listings often builds gradually and institutional investors frequently wait until the final hours before placing bids.
By Friday’s close, the institutional investor portion had been subscribed 70.55 times, while the retail investor allocation was covered 2.7 times. Bids from employees reached 2.93 times the available shares, while existing Reliance shareholders subscribed 7.6 times their allocation.
Jio’s telecoms business, launched in 2016, transformed India’s mobile market by offering free voice calls and data services, putting pressure on established rivals Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea. By customer numbers within a single country, its telecoms operation is now second only to China Mobile.
The company’s listing also represents a significant milestone for Reliance Industries, whose shares have delivered returns of about 900 per cent since 2006, compared with a 685 per cent gain for India’s benchmark Nifty index, according to LSEG data.
Reliance was founded by Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh Ambani’s father and Akash Ambani’s grandfather. The conglomerate has cultivated a large base of individual investors over decades, with its 1977 stock market listing helping popularise share ownership in India.
The scale of demand for Jio Platforms will now place attention on its market debut and whether the company can sustain investor confidence as a publicly traded business.
About the Author
Cecilia Attah is a tech analyst with a degree from Benue State University. She covers tech news and startups at TechRegard with a focus on how technology is transforming Africa and shaping the global landscape.
