(June 19): Jio Platforms Ltd, a crown jewel of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s oil-to-retail conglomerate, filed draft listing documents on Friday, starting the process of unlocking shareholder value in one of India’s most-anticipated initial public offerings (IPOs).
The digital and telecommunications company’s draft red herring prospectus was submitted to India’s market regulator shortly after Ambani told shareholders of Reliance Industries Ltd that Jio Platforms’ board had approved the document.
“This is a deeply emotional moment for me, for the entire Reliance family, and millions of its shareholders,” the 69-year-old said during this annual address to Reliance shareholders. He described the Jio IPO as “the most important value creation milestone this year”, and said his children Akash, Isha and Anant are leading the process to take the company public.
Jio Platforms’ board has approved the issue of as many as 270 million new shares in the offering, Reliance said in a stock-exchange filing. The company intends to dilute about 2.9% of its equity, according to Bloomberg News calculations. The draft prospectus said net proceeds from the share sale will be used to prepay debt and for general corporate purposes.
The company, which owns India’s largest wireless carrier, could raise as much as US$4 billion ($5.17 billion) in the IPO and earn a market valuation of more than US$100 billion, people familiar with the matter said earlier.
A listing of that size would surpass Hyundai Motor India Ltd’s US$3.3 billion offering in 2024, and could give a boost to India’s equity market, where fundraising has struggled recently after two record years. Heightened market volatility and stock price declines this year have forced some companies to downsize deals, while others have opted to delay planned listings.
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Indian stocks have recently clawed back some losses after the US-Iran interim peace deal. Earlier this month, the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd, operator of the world’s busiest derivatives market, filed for an offering that could surpass Hyundai’s.
Ambani, Reliance’s chairman and managing director, originally outlined plans to take Jio Platforms public back in 2019. At last year’s shareholder meet, he had spoken of plans to list the subsidiary by June 2026.
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Jio’s market debut would mark Reliance’s first public listing of a major business unit since Reliance Petroleum Ltd debuted in 2006. Reliance owns two-thirds of the company, and Meta Platforms Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google are among the global investors that have poured over US$20 billion into the digital venture.
India’s government in March introduced a rule allowing companies with a post-issue market capitalisation exceeding five trillion rupees ($68 billion) to dilute as little as 2.5% of their equity in an IPO, down from an earlier 5% requirement, easing large companies’ access to the primary market.
Reliance Industries is India’s most valuable publicly-listed company. Its shares have fallen around 16% in the year to date, taking its market capitalisation down to about 17.7 trillion rupees (US$187 billion). The broader Nifty 50 index has declined around 8% over the same period.
Jio stormed the Indian market with free calls and ultra-cheap data offers in 2016, when the industry had about a dozen wireless operators. The price war it unleashed forced rivals to merge, quit or go bankrupt, leaving India with just three private sector players.
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