Jio Platforms IPO: RIL shares climb 2.7% as India’s biggest issue opens; key details explained

Shares of Reliance Industries (RIL), the oil-to-telecom conglomerate, rallied in trade on Wednesday, October 21, as the much-awaited initial public offering (IPO) of its digital and technology arm, Jio Platforms, is set to open for subscription at 10 AM today.

The IPO marks a significant milestone for both the company and India's capital markets, as it is the country's largest public offering to date.

The RIL stock jumped as much as 2.68% to hit a high of ₹1,234.30 in the early session.

Jio Platforms IPO subscription

The qualified institutional buyers (QIB) portion was subscribed nearly two times.

While media reports suggested that the issue was fully subscribed by 9:30 AM, the BSE data at 9:35 AM showed an overall subscription of 0.57 times.

Key points investors need to know

Jio Platforms is betting that its technology, artificial intelligence, and cloud ambitions will drive growth beyond telecom, Managing Director Akash Ambani said on Tuesday, pitching the RIL unit as a technology company ahead of India's biggest IPO.

"There is no either-or at Jio: the network is our technology," Ambani said in an interview with PTI, highlighting the company's in-house 5G core, cloud-native radio access network and software platform serving 533.3 million customers.

"Connectivity was the first product we built on that platform. Digital services, AI and cloud are what we are layering on top of it now," he said.

Jio Platforms plans to raise over ₹30,200 crore through the IPO, valuing the business at around $108 billion. The offering comes as investors assess whether the country's largest telecom operator can convert its vast customer base into higher-margin revenue from digital services, enterprise technology and AI, as subscriber growth alone becomes a less powerful driver of expansion.

The company has also identified satellite connectivity and next-generation 6G technology as future areas of development.

Ambani said Jio's growth opportunities extend across mobile services, home broadband and enterprise digital solutions. Around 26 crore Indians still use 2G services, while fixed broadband reaches only about 21% of the country's households, he said.

Jio accounted for 67.56% of India's net fixed-broadband additions in FY26, while digital-services adoption among the country's more than 7.9 crore micro, small and medium enterprises remains below three per cent, Ambani added.

Jio Platforms’ record anchor book

Jio Platforms raised ₹8,109.85 crore from 212 anchor investors by allotting 7.24 crore shares at the upper end of its price band of ₹1,119 apiece, ahead of the IPO’s opening on Wednesday. Institutional demand reportedly exceeded ₹2.5 lakh crore, more than 30 times the amount available in the anchor book, signalling strong interest from large investors.

The Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) received the largest allocation of ₹499.98 crore, accounting for 6.17% of the anchor portion, followed by New World Fund Inc at ₹486.27 crore and the Government of Singapore at ₹340.93 crore.

SBI Focused Fund and BNP Paribas Financial Markets – ODI were allotted shares worth ₹315 crore and ₹303.25 crore, respectively.