SEBI clears Jio Platforms to sell 27 crore shares in what would be India’s largest IPO

The Securities and Exchange Board of India issued an observation letter on Jio Platforms’ draft red herring prospectus on 28 August. In SEBI practice that letter is the clearance to proceed. Reliance Industries told the exchanges the same day that its subsidiary had received the observations. Kotak Mahindra Capital is the lead manager. The approval is valid for one year.

The draft offer is a fresh issue of up to 27 crore equity shares of face value ₹10. That is about 2.93 percent of the post-issue base. No existing shareholder is selling in the papers now on file. Market officials put the intended raise near ₹37,700 crore, or about $3.8 billion. At that size the issue would pass Hyundai Motor India’s 2024 listing, which raised the rupee equivalent of $3.3 billion, and would stand ahead of the National Stock Exchange’s still-unpriced offer, often cited near ₹30,000 crore.

People familiar with the books have spoken of a valuation between $100 billion and $137 billion. Those figures are not in the draft. The price band will be set through book-building once the company files the red herring prospectus. Dates have not been announced.

Use of proceeds is specific. About ₹27,500 crore is marked to repay or prepay borrowings of Reliance Jio Infocomm, the wireless operating company. The rest is for general corporate purposes. The draft argues that lower debt will free cash for 5G densification, fixed broadband, and AI and cloud services. Jio Platforms is the holding company for the telecom network plus those digital lines.

Ownership after a successful issue would still be concentrated. Reliance Industries holds 66.43 percent. Meta Platforms holds 9.98 percent. Google holds 7.73 percent. Those 2020 investments, struck when Jio was raising capital at speed during the pandemic, will be tested in a public book for the first time. Retail investors are due at least 35 percent of the net issue under the draft.

The operating numbers in the filing are large even by Indian telecom standards. Reliance Jio is the world’s second-largest mobile operator by single-country subscribers after China Mobile. The Hindu put the June 2026 base above 53 crore. An earlier Reuters account of the June draft cited 524.4 million subscribers at 31 March, including 268.5 million on 5G, and a headcount cut of about 21 percent to 27,935 in the same year. Revenue and subscribers rose while staff fell.

The listing will land in a market that has been jumpy since the Iran war began to move energy prices and foreign flows. It will also land beside the NSE’s own long-delayed offer. For Ambani the point is to put a price on a company that has been private through the entire Jio build-out. For the book, the test is whether investors will pay a software-style multiple for a business whose cash is still made, first, by selling mobile minutes and data in India.

SEBI also cleared several smaller offers the same week, including Paras Healthcare, Sadbhav Futuretech and Bharat PET. None of those files will set the tone of the autumn calendar. Jio’s price band will.