Jio IPO rings home on promise of possibility

KKR & Co

26/10/2026 12:00

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist.  The opinions expressed are her own.  Updates to add graphic and adds Jio platforms RIC inline.
By Ujjaini  Dutta
BENGALURU, Oct 26 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Jio Platform’s JIOP.NS successful share sale underscores an enduring belief in the Ambanis' ability to generate shareholder value. Their telecom company has pulled off India’s largest IPO despite AI jitters roiling global tech stocks. But the $3.2 billion issuance was also priced to do well. Investors are getting the family's digital ambitions at a "dumb-pipe" valuation multiple. That cushions risks from Jio’s 2020 backers who paid up for that dream and still need an exit.
Institutional investors were the most emphatic, with subscriptions hitting 71 times the shares offered to them. Foreign institutional buyers accounted for 28% of the overall bids. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, BlackRock BLK.N, Fidelity and others popped up in the anchor book. Retail investors were offered twice as many shares as institutions, and were more circumspect, but their portion was still nearly three times oversubscribed.
They all stand to benefit if the Ambanis can deliver on their vision of Jio as a technology platform rather than just a telecom operator with some 524 million mobile subscribers. Akash Ambani, Jio's managing director, insists the difference between the 10-year-old venture he leads within Reliance Industries RELI.NS and its older telecom rival, Bharti Airtel BRTI.NS, is that the upstart merely uses connectivity as its distribution layer and has proprietary tech that can be licensed internationally.
There may be something to that: revenue from digital services including gaming, cloud computing, Internet of Things and cloud PC accounts for just 12% of Jio's top line but that business grew 36% year-on-year at the end of March 2026, more than twice as fast as overall revenue. For now, investors are getting those dreams for free. At the $109 billion implied IPO market value, Jio commands a multiple of 31 times its earnings for 2027, per Visible Alpha estimates, a negligible difference to Airtel's 30 times.
Investors also had to weigh the Ambanis' digital dreams against risks including the potential disruption from satellite-based connectivity: Elon Musk's Starlink has been waiting since 2022 to operate commercially in India and, if granted access, would be a direct competitor. There’s also a potential overhang as global investors that bought into Jio six years ago may seek an exit once a six-month lock-up period expires. Financial investors led by KKR KKR.N and Silver Lake own about 15% of the company. For their shares, they paid 23 times Jio’s annualised EBITDA, against its current valuation multiple of 12 times. Jio's latest buyers have less to lose. 
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CONTEXT NEWS
Jio Platforms, the telecom ⁠unit of India's Reliance Industries, on October 24 set the offer price for its IPO at 1119 rupees per share, at the top end of the marketed range. It values the company's issuance at $3.18 billion and its equity at $109 billion. 
Jio drew bids for 4.4 billion shares, about 22 times the 197 million shares ​on offer after three days of bidding, exchange data showed. Qualified institutional buyers bid for nearly 71 ⁠times the shares reserved for them, while foreign institutional investors accounted for 28% of the total bids received. Non-institutional investors subscribed 14 times their share, while retail investors bid for about 3 times their allotted portion.

(Editing by Una Galani; Production by Aditya Srivastav)
((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on DUTTA/ujjaini.dutta@thomsonreuters.com))