India's Jio Platforms targets $106 billion valuation in IPO, sources say

Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms is targeting a valuation of 10.3 trillion rupees ($106 billion) in what would be the country’s biggest listing, four bankers on the deal said on Friday.

Jio Platforms, which counts Meta and Google among its major foreign investors, is set to price its shares at 1,065 to 1,119 rupees apiece, the sources told Reuters.

The IPO would raise about 302 billion rupees ($3.1 billion) at the upper end of the price band, surpassing Hyundai Motor India’s $2.9 billion issue in 2024.

The sources were not authorised to speak to media and declined to be named. Reliance did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Bloomberg reported the details of the IPO price band and valuations earlier in the day.

Jio’s IPO follows the high-profile listing of the National Stock Exchange of India in September, underscoring investor appetite for large offerings in the Indian market.

Year-to-date IPO proceeds in India rose 8.3% to $12.65 billion compared with the same period last year, LSEG data shows.

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A successful listing would place Jio Platforms among the top four Indian listed companies by market capitalisation, behind parent Reliance Industries, rival Bharti Airtel and the country’s largest private lender HDFC Bank.

The IPO valuation is below the $131 billion expected in June when the draft papers for the offering were filed. Analysts said the lower IPO pricing was likely due to a broader correction in the secondary market driven by an Iran war-related spike in crude oil prices.

India’s benchmark stock index Nifty 50 has dropped around 6% in nearly four months since then.

Jio, led by Mukesh Ambani’s son Akash Ambani, operates Reliance’s telecom and digital businesses, spanning mobile services, fixed broadband, cloud, entertainment, enterprise technology and AI offerings.

The company plans to use up to 275 billion rupees of the net proceeds to repay or prepay borrowings of its telecom subsidiary, Reliance Jio Infocomm.

The company’s telecom arm had 524.4 million customers as of March. Revenue from operations rose 14.6% to 1.47 trillion rupees in the fiscal year ended March, while profit increased 15.1% to 300.5 billion rupees.