Jio Platforms Surges 21% On Record-Breaking IPO Debut, Crossing $130 Billion Valuation

Jio Platforms — the Indian telecom and digital services subsidiary of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, with backing from Meta and Google — notched a 21% gain on its first day of public trading Wednesday, closing out the largest and most heavily oversubscribed IPO in Indian history. The offering raised $3.2 billion total, drawing more than $77 billion in combined investor bids across institutional and retail categories.

Shares opened at ₹1,358 (~$14) apiece, marking a sharp jump from the final IPO issue price of ₹1,119 (~$12). That opening price values Jio at roughly ₹12.5 trillion (~$131.9 billion), making it the second-most valuable listed firm in India, second only to its parent Reliance Industries, which carries a market cap of ~₹16 trillion (~$168.6 billion). For context, when Meta and Google first poured capital into the business back in 2020, Jio was valued at a maximum of ₹4.91 trillion, equal to around $65 billion at the time.

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Unprecedented Investor Demand For The National Telecom Leader

Exchange data confirms the IPO subscription window, which ran for just two days from October 21 to 22, saw bids for 22.19 times the total number of shares on offer, with more than 13.8 million individual and institutional applicants submitting bids. That makes it the most oversubscribed public offering ever recorded in India, highlighting overwhelming investor enthusiasm for the country’s largest mobile network operator.

Jio first entered India’s already crowded telecom market in 2016, rolling out free introductory data plans and ultra-low cost service packages that rapidly siphoned off millions of customers from established incumbents including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and state-owned BSNL. The firm has since cemented its status as India’s top telecom provider, with more than 540 million total active customers, per comments from Jio Platforms managing director Akash Ambani at the Wednesday listing ceremony. While Jio’s mobile service prices are now broadly at parity with its competitors, its business has long expanded beyond basic telecom into fiber broadband, enterprise cloud services, and artificial intelligence verticals.

As Mukesh Ambani gradually hands over day-to-day operational control of the Reliance group to the next generation of leadership, his eldest son Akash has taken on a growing public-facing and strategic role at Jio. At the listing event, he laid out an ambitious global vision for the firm: “My dream is that one day, when the world counts its great technology companies, one of them will be from India, and that company will be called Jio Platforms Limited.”

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Strong Financial Performance And Planned Use Of IPO Proceeds

For the full fiscal year ending March 2026, Jio posted a net profit of ₹300.5 billion (~$3.2 billion) on total operating revenue of ₹1.47 trillion (~$15.5 billion), with both metrics rising roughly 15% year-over-year. Growth has remained steady through the most recent quarter, with Jio reporting nearly 12% top-line growth and 9% profit expansion in the three months to June.

Jio plans to deploy up to ₹275 billion (~$2.9 billion) of its IPO proceeds to pay down outstanding debt at its core telecom operating arm Reliance Jio Infocomm, with the remaining funds allocated for general corporate and expansion purposes. As of June 30, Jio’s total outstanding borrowings stood at ₹613.7 billion (~$6.5 billion).

Notably, none of Jio’s early global backers sold shares in the IPO, which consisted entirely of newly issued primary stock. The full cohort of 2020 cornerstone investors, who poured billions of dollars into the firm at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, retained their full holdings: Meta (then known as Facebook) invested $5.7 billion that year, Google put in $4.5 billion, and growth equity firms General Atlantic, Silver Lake, and Vista Equity Partners also participated in the 2020 funding rounds.