Jio vs Airtel: How do two telecom giants fare on key metrics against each other ahead of Jio Platforms IPO

The telecom stocks were buzzing in Thursday’s trade after Jio Platforms announced its IPO dates late Wednesday evening. The issue will commence subscription on 21st October till 23rd October 2026 to raise ₹30,213 crore, making it India’s biggest IPO by issue size. The much-awaited IPO’s price band is fixed at ₹1,065 to ₹1,119 per share.Soon after the announcement, shares of Reliance Industries jumped nearly 3% on Thursday as major value unlocking could help re-rate the Oil-to-Telecom behemoth in the near future.

Besides this, shares of Bharti Airtel jumped over 3.5% on Thursday as investors drew comparisons between the two telecom giants. Here is how Jio Platforms stands against its closest competitor.

Subscriber base

Jio Platforms, which revolutionized the Indian telecom industry after its launch in 2016, has also clinched the top spot in the concentrated telecom market. Reliance-owned Jio Platforms holds 535 million subscribers as of Q1FY27, holding the top position in the mobile telecom user space. The company also holds top position in 5G user category at ~285 million as of Q1FY27. Airtel holds 490 million subscribers in India and over ~188 million subscribers in Africa, collectively holding more than 680 million users as of Q1FY27. Though Jio holds a higher subscriber base in comparison with Airtel, the latter has shown stronger growth in subscriber additions. Airtel added over 55 million users in Q1FY27, compared to the previous year's 35 million users added by Jio in the same period.

ARPUs

On the key sectoral metric,Bharti Airtel has surpassed Reliance jio by significant margin. Average revenue per user for Bharti Airtel stands at ₹264 per user as compared to ₹250 per user in the same period last year. Similarly, Jio Platforms ARPU stood at ₹215 per user for the period ending September 2026. Despite having a subscriber base more than 250% higher, Jio Platforms makes less revenue per user than Bharti Airtel.

Valuations

After Jio Platforms IPO announcement and its price band, the valuation divergence has nearly evaporated. Jio Platforms launched the IPO at nearly ~₹10.30 lakh crore market capitalisation vs ₹11 lakh crore market cap of Bharti Airtel. At the current market cap and earnings, Jio and Bharti Airtel trade at 34x to35x price to earnings ratio, not leaving much discount for incoming shareholders. However, when compared on growth ratios, Bharti Airtel supersedes Jio Platforms despite being the second leader in the industry. At the price-to-earnings growth, or PEG ratio, which measures a stock for its affordability in comparison to the growth delivered, Bharti Airtel continues to trade at a 0.84 PEG ratio vs 2.2 for Jio Platforms.

The difference is largely driven by robust profit growth offered by Bharti Airtel over the long term. For a 3-year period, profitability has grown at >60% CAGR. Similarly, Bharti Airtel holds ₹43,140 crore in free cash flow as of FY 26 vs ₹14,157 crore. Meaning, Bharti Airtel offers more value at the current valuation as compared to Jio Platforms.

Similarly, Bharti Airtel’s India businesses delivered a 57.4% EBITDA margin as of Q1FY27, as compared to 53.2% for Jio Platforms for the same period.

What makes Jio different from Airtel?

Exudes the financials, at the very core both the players differ from each other on scalability and growth approach. Jio Platforms has scaled to become India’s top telecom operator with its aggressive growth approach. Whereas, Bharti Airtel has maintained its supremacy in driving growth through providing value. Jio aims at becoming an all-in-one technological platform by providing Internet-to-streaming services all under one umbrella. On the other hand, Airtel focuses on multinational growth with its strong and growing customer base in Africa.

Bottomline

Though Airtel might supersede Jio in terms of margins, higher revenue per user, and growth, Jio is backed by India’s largest conglomerate to fund its future growth. Besides this, Jio Platforms also holds global partnerships with tech giants like NVIDIA, Alphabet will place it in the league of advanced AI and cloud infrastructure companies, making AI accessible to millions of users..Going forward, will Jio continue on its scalability path or will drive for higher revenue growth, needs to be closely monitored.