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Jio Platforms' IPO: A Landmark Moment for Indian Markets
When Jio first arrived in 2016, hardly anyone imagined that a mobile network would change the way a whole country uses the internet. Yet it did, and data became so affordable that even people who had never gone online were suddenly watching videos on their phones. Now, a few years later, the company behind that change has gone public. Jio's IPO (Initial Public Offering) is one of the biggest India has seen, and it has been talked about in homes, offices and trading rooms alike. So let us see how the issue went, what the numbers tell us, and where Jio hopes to go from here.
Illustration by The Geostrata
THE ISSUE AT A GLANCE
Jio Platforms filed its draft papers with SEBI on June 19, 2026, and it came back with the final prospectus on October 14. The public could bid between October 21 and 23, at a price of ₹1,065 to ₹1,119 per share, and each lot had 12 shares. In total, the company set out to raise about ₹30,213 crore. Importantly, every share in the issue was new, which means that no existing investor sold out and all the money goes straight to the company. A few days before the public bidding, anchor investors had also put in ₹8,109.85 crore.
Most of this money will be used to reduce borrowings. Up to ₹27,500 crore will go towards repaying loans of Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (RJIL), which runs the telecom business, and the rest will be kept for general company needs. At the top of the price band, Jio Platforms was valued at roughly ₹10.3 lakh crore once the issue was complete.
FINANCIAL HEALTH AND PROFITABILITY
When we go through the prospectus, it becomes clear that the company has been growing at a steady and healthy pace. In FY26, it earned about ₹1,46,885 crore as revenue, while its EBITDA stood at close to ₹76,255 crore and its profit after tax came to around ₹30,049 crore. If we compare these figures with those of the previous year, we find that revenue went up by 14.6 percent, EBITDA by 18.8 percent and profit by 15.1 percent. The EBITDA margin has also improved, rising from about 50 percent to nearly 52 percent, and this indicates that the company is able to keep more of what it earns as more and more people use its network.
The average customer is also spending a little more than before. The monthly revenue per user was ₹181.7 in FY24, and it rose to ₹214 in FY26, before reaching ₹215.6 in the April to June quarter of FY27. At the same time, fewer people are leaving the network, as the monthly churn has come down to 1.6 percent. The debt position of the company has become better as well, because its net debt, when compared with its EBITDA, has fallen from 0.71 times to 0.36 times. In the June 2026 quarter alone, the company made a profit of about ₹7,764 crore.
GROWTH STORY BEYOND TELECOM
Even though mobile services still bring in most of the money today, the investors who put their money into this issue were clearly looking at something much bigger. Jio now has around 533 million customers, and nearly 285 million of them are already using 5G. According to analysts, the company handles about 60 percent of all the mobile data used in India, and its 5G customer base is the largest anywhere outside China.
Home broadband is widely seen as the next big step for the company. Emkay Global has pointed out that Jio managed to win about 42.67 percent of the new broadband customers within just a year of entering this segment. Apart from that, the company is also building AI-based services, cloud products, fibre networks and satellite connectivity, and it is working on 6G as well, all of which go well with India’s growing digital ambitions. The AI infrastructure is being paid for separately by the Reliance group, and for this reason the money from the IPO can be used fully to bring down debt. It is also worth noting that Meta and Google have already invested in Jio. Since the IPO was a fresh issue, neither of them sold any shares, and only their percentages have slipped to about 9.68 percent and 7.49 percent respectively.
VALUATION
At the price at which the shares were issued, investors are paying about ₹34 for every ₹1 of profit that Jio earned in FY26. In the case of Bharti Airtel, the same investors would have to pay about ₹37.5 for every ₹1 of its profit. So, Jio is priced a little lower than its closest rival, and this is one of the reasons why several brokerages, including Emkay Global and Swastika Investmart, advised investors to subscribe to the issue. At the same time, we should not think of the shares as cheap just because they are priced a little lower than Airtel’s. The price that investors are paying today already takes into account the hope that Jio will earn a good deal more in the coming years from 5G, broadband and digital services. For that reason, the company will have to deliver this growth over time if the valuation is to be justified.
MARKET SENTIMENT AND DEMAND
The response from investors was very strong indeed. By the time the bidding came to a close, the issue had been subscribed about 22.19 times in total. Large institutions asked for 70.55 times the shares that were kept aside for them, whereas non-institutional investors asked for 14 times and retail investors for 2.72 times. A few trackers have reported a slightly lower overall figure of about 21.4 times. As we can see from these numbers, institutions were the main force behind the demand, while retail investors took part in a more measured way, which is quite natural when an issue is as large as this one.
Even before the shares were listed, the grey-market premium was hovering around ₹255 per share. The grey-market premium is the extra amount that some people are ready to pay for IPO shares even before those shares are listed on the stock exchange. Since this trading happens outside the official market, it is not regulated in any way, and the figure can go up or down very quickly. Many investors still look at it to get a rough idea of how the listing might turn out, but it is only an indication and not a promise of the actual listing price. On October 28, the shares finally listed on the BSE and NSE at ₹1,358, which is about 21.4 percent higher than the issue price of ₹1,119. For anyone who held just one lot of 12 shares, that meant a gain of around ₹2,868 on the very first day. Share prices change every day, so it is wise to look at live quotes for the latest picture.
POINTS TO WATCH
Like every big listing, this one comes with a few matters that investors would do well to keep in mind. The first of them is the return on capital employed, which is about 10.76 percent at present, while that of Airtel is nearly 19 percent. This does not mean that anything is wrong with the business, because it only shows that the huge amounts which Jio has spent on spectrum and fibre will need a little more time before they start giving higher returns. Besides this, the company has about ₹1.04 lakh crore of spectrum payments to make in the years ahead, and for that reason it will have to go on generating healthy cash from its day-to-day operations.
It is also worth remembering that Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, the telecom arm, alone accounts for close to 88 percent of the group’s revenue and almost 95 percent of its EBITDA. In other words, the newer businesses are still quite small when we compare them with the core network. The company’s earnings also depend, to some extent, on the tariffs it is able to charge in a market where several players are competing, and it works closely with other companies in the Reliance group for distribution and similar support. Finally, since the profits of the newer technology businesses are not shown separately in the accounts, a good part of the company’s valuation rests on how well those businesses will do in the years to come.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR RELIANCE AND THE MARKET
Reliance Industries will continue to be the promoter and the largest shareholder of Jio Platforms, although its holding has come down by a small margin after the issue. Because the money raised goes to Jio Platforms and not to Reliance, the listing makes the company financially stronger, and at the same time it gives the Reliance group a clear market price for one of its most valuable businesses.
For the stock market as a whole, the way in which such a large issue was taken up, and that too so smoothly, shows how deep and confident Indian capital markets have become over the years. It may also give other big companies the encouragement they need to go ahead with their own listing plans.
OUTLOOK
Now that Jio has fresh funds in hand and its debt is coming down, it is entering a new stage in which it will announce results every quarter, answer the questions of analysts and keep a large number of new shareholders informed. Investors will be watching closely how the average revenue per user, the number of new customers and the growth in broadband turn out, and they will also want to know how soon newer businesses such as AI services begin to add to the company’s earnings.
For those who intend to hold the shares for a long time, the main question is how well Jio can turn its size and its technology into steady returns. Whatever the answer may be, the listing is undoubtedly a proud moment for the country, and it shows that Indian companies are now able to raise public money on a world-class scale.
BY SHOUNAK MAJUMDER
TEAM GEOSTRATA
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