Bids worth over ₹7.40 lakh crore chased a ₹30,213 crore issue, and Jio closed its debut day at ₹1,417.50, up 26.67%.
MUMBAI: Jio Platforms Limited closed its first day of trading at ₹1,417.50 on the NSE, 26.67% above its issue price of ₹1,119. The Nifty 50 fell 0.32% to 22,678 over the same session. Notably, the 28 October listing followed the largest public share sale in Indian history. The fresh issue of ₹30,213 crore surpassed Hyundai Motor India’s ₹27,870 crore offering of 2024.
Institutions set the pace
The offer drew bids worth more than ₹7.40 lakh crore, roughly $89 billion. Consequently, all 27 crore shares were fully subscribed within 95 to 100 minutes of the window opening on 21 October. The final book closed at 22.19 times the issue size. However, demand was uneven. Qualified institutional buyers bid 70.55 times their quota while retail investors subscribed 2.72 times. Meanwhile, Reliance Industries shareholders took up 7.60 times their reserved portion. The issue also drew about 1.39 crore applications, the first Indian IPO to cross one crore. Earlier, the anchor book had raised ₹8,109.85 crore from 129 entities including LIC, BlackRock, Fidelity and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
A debut that ignored the tape
Jio opened at ₹1,358, a 21.36% premium, and touched an intraday high of ₹1,423.90 on the NSE. Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex lost 353 points to end at 73,253.44. Traded value on the NSE reached ₹24,276.24 crore. Encouragingly, deliverable quantity made up 68.56% of volume, which market data reads as accumulation by long-term holders rather than quick churn. Likewise, the grey market had signalled a gain of about 22%, close to the actual opening premium.
Second only to its parent
The closing market capitalisation stood at ₹13,05,380.12 crore, about $156 billion. Consequently, Jio became India’s second most valuable listed company, behind Reliance Industries at ₹15,67,744.61 crore. Furthermore, it overtook Bharti Airtel at ₹12,16,000 crore. Together, the two listed Reliance entities carry ₹28.72 lakh crore, which places the group ahead of the Tata Group by listed value.
Where the money goes
Reliance Industries, Meta and Google sold no shares, so every rupee flows to the company. Notably, up to ₹27,500 crore is earmarked to prepay borrowings and deferred spectrum liabilities of Reliance Jio Infocomm. Those borrowings stood at ₹61,372.2 crore on 30 June 2026. The underlying business is profitable. FY26 revenue was ₹1,46,885.3 crore with an EBITDA margin of 51.91% and a profit after tax of ₹30,049.1 crore. Prepaid connectivity supplied 77.08% of that revenue. Post-issue, the promoter holding stands at 64.48%.
Telecom price or technology price?
At the upper band, the issue valued Jio at 33.3 to 34.3 times FY26 earnings against a telecom peer average of 23.09 times. After the debut close, the trailing multiple rose to about 42 times, close to Airtel’s roughly 41 times. Therefore, public markets are pricing Jio as a hybrid of telecom and technology platform. That premium still needs delivery. Equity research ties returns on 5G and AI capital to enterprise cloud, digital services and home broadband, not mobile data alone. Motilal Oswal projects a tariff hike of about 15% in early 2027, and any delay could pressure margins. Likewise, Jio leases 48% of its towers from Summit Digitel and about 98% of its inter-city fibre from Jio Digital Fibre. Reliance Retail remains its exclusive prepaid distributor.
What to watch after the bell
The first test arrives on 30 October, when the board considers Q2 FY27 results and holds its inaugural analyst presentation. Furthermore, investors will track deployment of the ₹27,500 crore, interest savings in later filings, ARPU movement towards ₹200 and additions to JioAirFiber. Index committees are also expected to review inclusion in the Nifty 50, the Sensex and MSCI Emerging Markets. Approval would bring passive inflows.
At the exchange, Anant Ambani said “Today, Jio is shared with India.” Public shareholders now hold 35.52% of the company, and the coming quarters will show how that stake is rewarded.
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