Reliance Jio IPO: Akash Ambani says services, not tariff hikes, to drive revenue

“We always have the ability to take up prices,” Ambani told a press conference in Mumbai, but the company would rather give customers more services and charge for them than rely on price per gigabyte as its main lever.

Asked whether a tariff increase was coming, he gave no timeline. He said telecom spending per user as a share of India's per-capita income had roughly halved to about 1% since Jio’s 2016 launch, which he called headroom.

Chief Executive Pankaj Pawar said tariffs were only one of several levers.

Ambani said Jio charges about ₹4.9 per gigabyte against an industry average of ₹7.5, with customers using 43.7 GB a month.

“We expect a $1.4-trillion digital economy by FY31; we will take a huge market share of this,” Ambani said, naming mobile, home broadband and enterprise and international services as the growth engines.

He said Jio carries more than 60% of India’s wireless data traffic.

New services outside Jio's licensed telecom business, such as a voice-AI feature announced at Reliance's annual meeting, could push its EBITDA margin above the current level. The margin was 53.3% in April-June, up from about 50% three years ago, he added.

On overseas expansion, Ambani said Jio would offer its in-house network technology to foreign operators as a managed-service partner, not by selling hardware or software licences, and without heavy capital spending.

He said the split between domestic and international revenue would become clear “as we sign on our first customers”.

India accounted for 96.62% of revenue in the year to March 2026, according to the company's prospectus, which gives no figures for overseas sales.

Jio IPO details

Jio set a price band of ₹1,065 to 1,119 a share for its offer of up to 27 crore new shares, about 3% of existing capital, with no offer-for-sale component.

At the top of the band, the sale would raise about ₹30,213 crore, ahead of Hyundai Motor India’s ₹27,870 crore share sale in October 2024, the country’s biggest.

The price implies a market value of about ₹10.3 lakh crore, short of the roughly ₹11 lakh crore the company had earlier been said to seek.

Bidding runs from October 21 to 23, with anchor investors bidding on October 19. Shares are expected to begin trading on October 28. Proceeds will go toward prepaying borrowings of Reliance Jio Infocomm, the telecom subsidiary, and general corporate purposes, according to the October 14 red herring prospectus.

Jio's balance sheet

Reliance Jio Infocomm served 533.3 million customers at June-end, including 284.9 million on 5G, which Ambani said was the largest 5G base outside China. Average revenue per user rose to ₹215.6 a month.

Average monthly data consumption per customer reached 43.7 GB in the first quarter of FY27.

The company reported EBITDA of ₹76,225 crore in FY26, with a compound annual growth rate of 17.8% between FY24 and FY26. Its EBITDA margin stood at 53.3% in the first quarter of FY27, he said.

Ambani called home broadband the biggest growth engine, citing industry-wide additions of about 340 million 4G and 5G customers between fiscal 2026 and 2031 as another driver. Jio had 28.6 million fixed broadband customers and took 67.5% of India’s net fixed additions in fiscal 2026, he said.

Reliance Industries owns 66.43% of Jio Platforms.

Meta Platforms affiliate Jaadhu Holdings holds 9.98% and Google International 7.73%. Nineteen banks, including Kotak Mahindra Capital, Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Citi, are managing the offer.

Three growth engines

Ambani outlined a strategy built around technology, digital connectivity and infrastructure, supported by three growth engines: mobility, home broadband, and enterprise and international services.

Jio’s technology platform, which Ambani described as an end-to-end technology stack, is central to the strategy. Its connectivity business provides access to 533.3 million customers, and its infrastructure includes 3,60,537 towers and 26,800 MHz of spectrum.

In mobility, Jio expects industry-wide additions of 340 million 4G and 5G customers between FY26 and FY31, creating opportunities for higher average revenue per user (ARPU), a key measure of telecom operators' revenue-generating capacity.

Home broadband is another growth driver. Jio had 28.6 million fixed broadband customers and accounted for 67.5% of India’s net fixed broadband additions in FY26.

In enterprise services, Jio is targeting India’s estimated ₹5.1 lakh crore addressable market for digital services in FY26. It also plans to monetise its technology stack in selected overseas markets.

Ambani highlighted the transformation in India’s digital connectivity since Jio entered the telecom market in 2016, when average download speeds were about 2.5 Mbps. They have since risen to around 68 Mbps nationally.

He said Jio’s average 5G download speed was 198.9 Mbps, roughly twice that of competing operators over the preceding three years. The company also highlighted the sharp decline in data costs since its entry into the market, saying its current pricing stood among the lowest globally.

The expansion of affordable mobile data has helped drive higher consumption of online video, digital payments and other internet services, while the rollout of 5G and fixed broadband is opening additional opportunities for telecom operators to monetise data demand.

Ambani said the company’s goal was to help make India a leading digital society, with Jio serving as a partner in that transformation.