Telecom behemoth Jio Platforms Ltd’s Rs 30,213-crore initial public offering was fully subscribed within 100 minutes of opening on Wednesday, making it the fastest among India’s mega-issues to attract bids for all shares on offer, as institutional investors led an early rush for the country’s largest-ever IPO.
The issue had attracted bids for 28.31 crore shares against 19.75 crore shares on offer as of 12:33 p.m., translating into overall subscription of 1.43 times, according to exchange data. The offering remains open until October 23.
Demand was heavily skewed towards qualified institutional buyers, whose reserved portion was subscribed 4.13 times, with bids for 20.23 crore shares against 4.90 crore shares on offer. Domestic financial institutions, including banks and insurers, bid for 13.40 crore shares, while foreign institutional investors sought 5.94 crore shares.
The response from other investor categories was more subdued. The portion reserved for non-institutional investors was subscribed 0.57 times, while retail investors bid for 3.74 crore shares against 8.50 crore shares reserved for them, equivalent to 0.44 times subscription. The employee reservation was subscribed 0.95 times and the shareholder reservation 0.82 times.
The early pace sets Jio apart from other large Indian offerings. Bajaj Housing Finance’s IPO was fully subscribed by 2 p.m. on its opening day, while LG Electronics India’s offering reached full subscription by the end of Day 1 in 2025. Hyundai Motor India’s Rs 27,870-crore IPO, which held the previous record for India’s largest public offering, was subscribed just 18 per cent by the end of its first day in 2024.
Jio’s offering is also structurally different from those of Hyundai and LG Electronics, both of which were entirely offers for sale by existing shareholders. Jio is issuing up to 27 crore new shares, meaning the proceeds will go to the company rather than to shareholders selling their holdings.
Priced at Rs 1,065 to Rs 1,119 a share, the IPO would value Jio Platforms at about USD 108 billion at the upper end of the range. The offering is set to surpass Hyundai Motor India’s record and marks a landmark public-market test for the digital and telecom business of Reliance Industries Ltd, controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani.
The strong institutional response follows an equally robust anchor-investor book. Jio allotted shares worth about Rs 8,110 crore to 212 anchor investors at Rs 1,119 apiece on Monday. Bids for that allocation exceeded Rs 2.5 lakh crore, or more than 30 times the shares available, according to people familiar with the matter.
The scale of demand signals strong institutional appetite for exposure to Jio’s large telecom customer base and its ambitions in digital services, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. The company had 533.3 million customers, according to figures cited by its Managing Director, Akash Ambani, who has positioned Jio’s network and technology platforms as a foundation for expansion beyond connectivity.
The IPO will test whether investors are willing to value Jio not just as India’s largest telecom operator, but as a broader technology platform capable of generating higher-margin revenue from enterprise services, cloud and AI. That transition is central to the company’s growth story as subscriber additions alone become a less powerful driver of expansion. (Agencies)
