Jio Platforms Goes Public — India's Largest IPO, a Decade After Free Data

On Wednesday 28 October 2026 the shares of Jio Platforms, the Reliance Industries unit that owns India's largest mobile operator, Reliance Jio, began trading on the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and BSE in Mumbai. Reliance described the offering as the largest IPO in India to date. On its first morning the stock opened at ₹1,358, about 21% above the ₹1,119 issue price, and Jio became the second-most valuable listed company in the country, behind only its parent.

The Offer

The IPO consisted entirely of new shares: 270 million equity shares of ₹10 face value, priced at ₹1,119 each, including a securities premium of ₹1,109. No existing investor sold. Reliance's results release of 30 October put the gross proceeds, after an employee discount of ₹54 a share, at ₹30,188 crore; CNBC rounded the raise to 302 billion rupees, or $3.2 billion.

Demand arrived fast. Akash Ambani, Jio Platforms' managing director, said before the listing that the issue had been fully subscribed within 95 minutes of opening on 21 October, according to CNBC. TechCrunch, citing exchange data, reported bids worth more than $77 billion from over 13.8 million applicants and called it the most subscribed stock offering in India on record.

Listing Day

The shares opened at ₹1,358, a gain of about 21%. TechCrunch put the resulting valuation at around ₹12.5 trillion (about $131.9 billion); Reuters gave $131.5 billion. Either way Jio ranked second among Indian listed companies, behind Reliance Industries at about ₹16 trillion. Members of the Ambani family, including Akash Ambani, attended the listing ceremony in Mumbai.

The shareholder base after the issue still reflected the deals of 2020. CNBC reported that Reliance Industries held more than 66%, Jaadhu Holdings, an affiliate of Meta, nearly 10%, and Google International 7.7%. In 2020, according to TechCrunch, Meta (then Facebook) had invested $5.7 billion and Google $4.5 billion, at a valuation of up to ₹4.91 trillion, then about $65 billion.

In the same statement he said he was proud to see the rejuvenation of what he called "the equity cult", pioneered by Reliance's founder-chairman with the company's IPO in 1977.

From Free Data to the Largest Operator

Jio's place in Indian mobile history was set a decade earlier. On 1 September 2016, at Reliance Industries' 42nd annual general meeting in Mumbai, Mukesh Ambani announced the launch of Jio's 4G services and said voice calls would never be charged. Every service, data included, would be free from 5 September to 31 December 2016. The Next Web recorded Ambani's claim of an effective data rate of Rs 50 per gigabyte, while noting that it was unclear where in the published plans that rate applied.

Free data and low-cost services let Jio take customers quickly from Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and the state-owned BSNL, TechCrunch noted, and it went on to become the country's largest telecom operator. Reuters reported that its user numbers are second only to China Mobile among operators counted on a single-country basis. Reliance's release for the quarter to September 2026 gave a total subscriber base of over 542 million, with 300 million on 5G, 30 million fixed-broadband subscribers and average data use of 44.2 GB per person per month.

Where It Fits

Jio's listing closes a loop that runs from the pricing shock of 2016 through the mobile decade that followed. Most of the money raised went to repaying Reliance Jio Infocomm's external commercial borrowings, and the investors who arrived in 2020 kept their stakes. This page describes the listing as of 9 November 2026.