Jio Platforms’ IPO drew demand of 2.86 times the shares reserved for qualified institutional buyers within minutes of opening on Wednesday, as investors moved quickly into what is set to become India’s largest public issue by value.
The QIB portion, comprising 4,90,07,827 shares, reached full subscription within 10 minutes and crossed two times demand in under 30 minutes, according to sources cited by PTI. The overall issue was subscribed 0.83 times at the time of the report.
Jio Platforms is seeking to raise about ₹30,213 crore through a fresh issue of shares. The offer opened on Wednesday and is scheduled to close on October 23. It has no offer-for-sale component, meaning existing shareholders are not selling shares as part of the public issue.
At the upper end of the ₹1,065-to-₹1,119 price band, the issue values Jio Platforms at roughly USD 108 billion. The offering is expected to exceed Hyundai Motor India’s ₹27,870-crore IPO in 2024 and become India’s largest IPO by value.
The company is offering up to 27 crore fresh shares. Ahead of the public issue, Jio Platforms allotted shares worth about ₹8,110 crore to 212 anchor investors at ₹1,119 per share, the top end of the price band. Bids for the anchor allocation exceeded ₹2.5 lakh crore, or more than 30 times the shares available, according to people familiar with the matter. One person cited in the report estimated total demand at about USD 26 billion.
The strong institutional response comes as Jio Platforms presents itself as more than a telecom operator. Managing Director Akash Ambani said the company plans to build growth around technology, artificial intelligence and cloud services, alongside its connectivity business.
“There is no either-or at Jio: the network is our technology,” Ambani told PTI in an interview. He pointed to the company’s in-house 5G core, cloud-native radio access network and software platform serving 533.3 million customers.
“Connectivity was the first product we built on that platform. Digital services, AI and cloud are what we are layering on top of it now,” he said.
The IPO therefore places Jio’s digital infrastructure ambitions at the centre of investor scrutiny. The company is seeking to demonstrate that its large customer base can support higher-margin activity in digital services, enterprise technology and artificial intelligence as subscriber growth becomes a less powerful source of expansion.
For India’s wider digital economy, the issue also puts the commercial value of telecom infrastructure, cloud-native networks and large-scale customer platforms under the spotlight. The immediate market test will continue until October 23, when bidding for the public issue closes.
