Ambani's Reliance Jio hires banks for IPO, will raise no new funds, sources say (updated)

Axis Bank

18/03/2026 10:28

Reliance Jio IPO could be India's biggest ever

The stock offering will raise no new funds, sources say

As many as 17 marquee banks working on offering

Reliance plans to file for approval this month, sources say

Adds details on structure, background in paragraphs 6-7, 13-16

By Vibhuti Sharma, Jayshree P Upadhyay and Aditya Kalra

MUMBAI, March 18 (Reuters) - Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio Platforms has hired 17 banks to manage its Mumbai stock listing, which will see the company raise no new funds and allow exits for some shareholders, four sources familiar with the matter said.

The IPO will be executed as a so-called "offer for sale" in India, three of the sources said, where only existing shareholders sell their shares to the public.

Reliance did not respond to Reuters queries.

"We don't need new money," said one of the sources, explaining the decision not to raise funds from the IPO.

Over the past six years, Jio has diversified into AI and raised funds from investors including KKR KKR.N, General Atlantic, Silver Lake and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

The offer-for-sale route is increasingly becoming a lucrative exit route for global investors and how large IPOs are executed in India. Other recent IPOs via this route included the 2024 listing of Hyundai Motor HYUN.NS and LG Electronics India LGEL.NS in 2025.

In November, investment bank Jefferies estimated that Reliance Jio's valuation stood at $180 billion.

LONG LIST OF INVESTMENT BANKS

The hiring of banks brings the parent of India's largest telecom operator Reliance Jio, with over 500 million users, closer to being possibly the country's largest IPO worth more than $4 billion.

Jio's roster of 17 advisors includes Wall Street giants Citigroup C.N and JPMorgan JPM.N, and Indian investment banks Axis Capital, ICICI Securities, IIFL IIFL.NS, and Kotak Mahindra Capital, said two of the sources, who added that the plan is to file for regulatory approval this month.

Other banks on the list include the securities arms of Goldman Sachs GS.N, Morgan Stanley MS.N and Bank of America BAC.N, they added.

Goldman Sachs and Bank of America declined to comment. The other investment banks did not respond to requests for comment.

The news on hiring of banks and prospectus filing timeline for Jio's listing come as the Mideast conflict has cast a cloud over global capital market deals, with a handful getting pulled.

Strong IPO momentum in India, however, seems intact with the largest exchange operator, the
National Stock Exchange
 of India, saying last week it had hired 20 banks to manage its IPO.

It's not unusual for a large number of banks to vie for a mandate and get hired for large equity public offerings of private enterprises, as they compete for league table credit in a market where deals exceeding a billion dollars are rare.

In the country's largest-ever IPO mandate, 18 investment banks were involved in the public offering of shares by asset manager ICICI Prudential AMC in 2025, which saw a share sale of $1.2 billion.

 (Reporting by Vibhuti Sharma and Jayshree P Upadhyay in Mumbai and Aditya Kalra in Delhi; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee, Joe Bavier and Bernadette Baum)

 ((Vibhuti.Sharma@thomsonreuters.com;))