Jio Platforms opened its IPO on October 21, 2026.

The price band is ₹1,065–₹1,119 per share. The company is issuing up to 27 crore new shares, making the issue worth as much as ₹30,213 crore at the upper end—the largest IPO India has seen. At ₹1,119, Jio is valued at roughly ₹10.3 lakh crore, or $108 billion, which would place it among India's largest listed companies.

Importantly, this is a 100% fresh issue. There is no offer-for-sale. Reliance Industries, Meta, Google and Jio's other existing shareholders are not using the IPO to sell their holdings. The new shares amount to only about 2.9% of the post-issue equity.

Before the IPO, Reliance Industries owns 66.43% of Jio Platforms.

It is an unusual cap table for an Indian operating company: an Indian promoter surrounded by some of the world's largest technology companies, private-equity funds and sovereign investors.

And Jio today is much more than a mobile operator.

Its network is the foundation, but the company spans mobile connectivity, JioFiber and AirFiber, cloud and storage, entertainment and gaming, smart-home products, enterprise broadband, leased lines, IoT, private 5G, security, productivity tools and AI-based services. Its prospectus describes Jio as a technology platform built on digital connectivity rather than simply as a telecom company.

The scale is difficult to ignore.

By June 2026, Jio had 533.3 million connectivity subscribers. It carries roughly 60% of India's data traffic. Average monthly data consumption had reached 43.7 GB per user. Its fixed-broadband base had grown to 28.6 million customers, giving it about 43% of that market; in 5G/UBR fixed wireless access, its share was nearly 79%.

For FY26, Jio Platforms reported revenue from operations of ₹1,46,885 crore, EBITDA of ₹76,255 crore and profit after tax of about ₹30,049 crore. Revenue grew 14.6%, EBITDA 18.8% and PAT around 15%. EBITDA margin had reached 51.9%.

What happens to the IPO money is also straightforward.

Up to ₹27,500 crore—more than 90% of the maximum issue proceeds—is intended to repay borrowings of Reliance Jio Infocomm. The balance is for general corporate purposes. Jio's FY26 net leverage was already only 0.36 times EBITDA, so the IPO substantially strengthens an already-improving balance sheet.

The market's first reaction has been emphatic. The issue was fully subscribed within roughly two hours on Day 1; by the end of the day, overall demand was close to three times the shares available, led by institutional investors.

Those are the facts.

Now comes the more interesting part.

At one level, the bull case is easy to understand.

Jio has already done something very few businesses ever manage: it has built a utility-scale relationship with more than half a billion people.

The expensive part—the network, spectrum, customer acquisition, 5G rollout and national distribution—has largely been created.

The next phase is about getting more economic value from that infrastructure.

That can happen in several ways.

Jio's ARPU has already risen from ₹181.7 in FY24 to ₹215.6 in Q1 FY27. Interestingly, management said the latest increase came without another tariff action during the preceding 12 months.

Then there is broadband.

This may be one of the quieter parts of the Jio story, but potentially one of the more important ones.

Jio had 27.1 million fixed-broadband customers at the end of FY26 and captured almost 68% of all net industry additions during the year. By June, the base had reached 28.6 million, while Jio's share of 5G/UBR fixed wireless access was nearly 79%.

Why does that matter?

Because a mobile subscriber mainly buys connectivity.

A connected home can buy much more.

Broadband. Entertainment. Cloud storage. Gaming. Smart-home services. Productivity tools. Security. Eventually, perhaps AI services.

The economics therefore do not have to depend entirely on pushing the mobile bill higher.

Jio can try to increase the number of services attached to the same customer.

That is a considerably more interesting monetisation story.

And then there is enterprise.

India has millions of small and medium businesses that remain lightly digitised. Jio is attempting to sell them broadband, cloud, communications, security, private 5G, IoT and productivity services. The prospectus estimates adoption of enterprise digital services among Indian MSMEs at below 3%, suggesting a large addressable market if execution follows.

This is why treating Jio simply as another telecom company may miss part of the story.

But treating it as a technology company before those businesses generate meaningful profits can create the opposite mistake.

That tension is where the IPO becomes interesting.

At the upper price band, Jio trades at roughly 33 times FY26 basic earnings.

Within India, that valuation is not extraordinary compared with Bharti Airtel. Depending on the metric used, Jio can even look reasonable: Motilal Oswal noted a roughly 34x earnings multiple versus a higher headline multiple for Airtel. On EV/EBITDA, however, Nomura estimates Jio at around 10.5–10.9x versus about 9.2x for Airtel.

So the statement “Jio is cheaper than Airtel” depends very much on which number one chooses.

Internationally, the comparison becomes more demanding.

Jio is being valued at roughly $108 billion on annual revenue of around $15.5 billion.

Verizon is worth about $185 billion while generating around $139 billion of trailing revenue. AT&T is worth around $160 billion on approximately $127 billion of revenue.

That comparison is not apples-to-apples. Verizon and AT&T are mature, slower-growing businesses in a different market, with different capital structures and shareholder-return policies.

But it demonstrates the premium being placed on Jio's future.

Jio today produces only a fraction of their revenue, yet already commands a substantial portion of their market value.

Investors are therefore not valuing Jio merely on the profits coming from mobile calls and data today.

They are assigning value to India's growth, future ARPU, broadband, enterprise, cloud, AI and the possibility that Jio becomes a much wider digital platform.

That future may well materialise.

But it is not free.

There is also something unusual about the structure of the IPO.

₹30,213 crore sounds enormous—and in absolute terms it is.

Yet only about 3% of the company is being issued.

That creates a very large company with a relatively small initial public float.

Bharti Airtel, by comparison, already has several lakh crore rupees of publicly tradeable market value. Jio will arrive with only a fraction of that available for public trading.

With a brand this well known and demand this strong, limited supply can produce a scarcity premium.

That could support the share price initially.

It can also complicate price discovery.

If a stock lists 20% or 30% above its IPO price when very little equity is available, investors should distinguish between two different things:

Has the underlying business become more valuable—or has demand simply overwhelmed the available supply?

Over a few days, supply can dominate.

Over a decade, earnings will have to justify the price.

Subscriber acquisition cannot remain the main growth engine forever.

Jio already has 533 million customers.

The next 100 million will be harder—and less important economically—than extracting more value from the customers it already has.

That brings the discussion back to ARPU.

At ₹215.6 per month, Jio's revenue per subscriber remains low in absolute global terms. That gives Jio enormous theoretical headroom.

But Indian consumers are also exceptionally price-sensitive.

So I would not build the investment case simply around the assumption that Indian telecom tariffs will eventually resemble those of richer countries.

The more credible route may be:

higher tariffs + better customer mix + broadband + enterprise + additional digital services.

Jio itself appears to be pursuing exactly that combination.

If that works, revenue growth can continue even as subscriber growth eventually slows.

There is one final point that gets surprisingly little attention during blockbuster IPOs.

Jio will begin life on the stock exchange at around ₹10 lakh crore.

The starting point matters.

For a ₹20,000 crore company to become five times larger, it needs to create another ₹80,000 crore of market value.

For a ₹10 lakh crore company to become five times larger, it must create around ₹40 lakh crore.

That does not make it impossible.

Reliance itself has repeatedly demonstrated how large businesses can create new engines of growth.

But the burden of execution becomes considerably higher.

For Jio to produce exceptional long-term returns from this starting valuation, the story probably needs to extend beyond telecom.

Broadband must deepen.

ARPU must rise.

Enterprise must scale.

Digital services must become meaningful.

AI and cloud must start contributing economically.

And the company must do this while continuing to earn sensible returns on the enormous capital already invested.

That is the real long-term debate.

There is a strong case.

Scale is extraordinary. The network is already built. Data consumption continues rising. Broadband is gaining share rapidly. EBITDA is growing faster than revenue. The balance sheet gets materially stronger after the IPO. And few Indian companies possess a customer relationship with more than half a billion people.

There are also expectations embedded in the price.

A roughly ₹10.3 lakh crore valuation leaves less room for execution mistakes. The small initial float can amplify enthusiasm around listing. Global telecom comparisons show just how much growth premium investors are willing to grant Jio. And several businesses being discussed as future growth engines—AI, cloud and wider enterprise technology—still have to prove their economic significance.

Neither side needs to be exaggerated.

Jio does not need to be called cheap to be a great business.

And a demanding valuation does not automatically make it a bad investment.

Disclosure: This article is for information and education only. It is not a recommendation to subscribe to, buy, sell or hold Jio Platforms or any other security. IPOs and equity investments involve business, market and valuation risks. Investors should read the offer documents and evaluate the investment according to their own objectives, time horizon and risk capacity.

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