Jio Platforms, the telecom and digital services arm of Reliance Industries, is set to begin trading on the National Stock Exchange of India and BSE at 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday, after its initial public offering drew bids for more than 22 times the shares on offer.

The issue of 270 million new shares at a price band of INR 1,065 to INR 1,119 is worth about INR 302.1 billion (₹30,213 crore) at the top of the range, according to offer details compiled by IPO Watch and brokerage Upstox. Broker Zerodha lists a slightly lower issue size of ₹30,188 crore. Bidding ran from Oct. 21 to Oct. 23, and allotment was finalized on Monday.

For investors across Asia, the listing is a test of how much appetite India's market has for a very large domestic offering. It also gives funds and individual investors a direct way to own Reliance's telecom and digital business for the first time, rather than through shares of the parent.

Institutions led the book

Subscription data published by Upstox and INDmoney show the issue was covered 22.19 times overall. Qualified institutional buyers bid for 70.55 times the shares reserved for them, non-institutional investors for 14 times and retail investors for 2.72 times.

Retail bids exceeded INR 258 billion, and bids on the public portion alone topped INR 4.9 trillion, Upstox reported. Including the anchor placement held on Oct. 19, total demand exceeded INR 7.4 trillion, it said. The issue drew about 13.9 million applications, according to Upstox.

The anchor book was worth about INR 81.1 billion, according to IPO Watch. Half of the anchor shares are locked up until Nov. 24, and the rest until Jan. 23, 2027, according to Zerodha's issue schedule, so the first of those dates is one to watch for selling pressure.

The offer was split with 50% of the net issue for qualified institutions, 15% for non-institutional investors and 35% for retail buyers, with separate quotas for employees and for shareholders of Reliance Industries. Nineteen banks managed the deal, including Kotak Mahindra Capital, Morgan Stanley India, BofA Securities India, Goldman Sachs (India) Securities, J.P. Morgan India and SBI Capital Markets, IPO Watch's listing shows.

A debt-cutting, all-primary deal

Jio's offer contained no offer for sale, the route by which existing shareholders sell stock in an IPO. All of the money goes to the company. It plans to use INR 275 billion to repay or prepay borrowings of its main subsidiary, Reliance Jio Infocomm, with the rest for general corporate purposes, according to Upstox.

Reliance Industries' stake falls to 64.48% after the issue from 66.43%, according to the shareholding table published by IPO Watch. Based on the post-issue share count of about 9.21 billion shares in that table, the new shares amount to roughly 2.9% of the enlarged company, and the top of the price band implies a market value of about INR 10.3 trillion, by Capital Times' calculation.

That slice is well below the 5% minimum that applied to large issuers at the start of the year. Reuters reported in January that Reliance preferred to list just 2.5% of Jio because of the company's size, and that India's market regulator had proposed cutting the minimum share sale for very large IPO candidates from 5% to 2.5%, a change then awaiting finance ministry approval. One person told Reuters that selling a smaller amount “creates more pricing tension.”

What investors are buying

Jio reported revenue of about INR 1.47 trillion (₹1,46,885 crore) for the fiscal year ended March 2026, up from about INR 1.28 trillion a year earlier, with net profit of about INR 300.5 billion, according to financial figures published by Upstox. In the April to June quarter, revenue was about INR 391.7 billion and profit about INR 77.6 billion.

The company had 524.4 million telecom subscribers, including 268.5 million on 5G, and 27.1 million home broadband customers, and it handled about 60% of India's wireless data traffic in fiscal 2026, according to the issue summary published by Zerodha. Its ratio of net debt to EBITDA fell to 0.36 times in fiscal 2026 from 0.88 times two years earlier.

The same summary flags risks investors will weigh after listing: about INR 1.05 trillion in deferred spectrum payments owed to the Department of Telecommunications, competition from rival operators and global digital platforms, regulatory changes on spectrum and data, and continued control by Reliance Industries. The company has never paid a dividend.

Valuation expectations have moved over the past year. Reuters reported in January that Jefferies had estimated Jio's value at about US$180 billion, while some bankers were pitching US$200 billion to US$240 billion.

Shares were due to be credited to investors' demat accounts on Tuesday. Wednesday's opening price will show whether the strong institutional book carries into trading, and the anchor lock-up expiry in late November is the next checkpoint.