MUMBAI, October 22 (Aalimi Nation) – The initial public offering of Jio Platforms, billed as the largest in India's market history, was fully subscribed on its first day of bidding on Wednesday, with large institutional investors driving most of the demand, according to exchange data.
The issue, worth Rs 30,213 crore, opened on October 21 with a price band of Rs 1,065 to Rs 1,119 per share. It comprises up to 27 crore fresh shares, meaning the money raised will go to the company rather than to existing shareholders. At the top of the band, the offer values Jio Platforms at roughly $108 billion, according to market estimates.
Demand on day one
By mid-afternoon, bids had been received for about 49.56 crore shares against 19.75 crore on offer, or around 2.5 times the issue size, according to exchange data. Later in the day the subscription stood at about 3.01 times, with bids worth around Rs 66,500 crore at the upper end of the band, according to the same data.
Qualified institutional buyers, which include mutual funds, insurers and foreign investors, had subscribed their portion about 7.46 times by mid-afternoon. The non-institutional category stood at about 1.32 times at that stage. The employee portion was fully booked, and the quota for Reliance Industries shareholders was subscribed about 1.16 times.
The retail portion was the slowest to fill. It was around 60 per cent subscribed by mid-afternoon and about 0.68 times by the evening tally, so it remained undersubscribed at the end of the first day. Retail bidding typically builds toward the last day of an issue, and the final demand mix could change before the offer closes.
Anchor round
On Monday, ahead of the public offer, Jio Platforms raised about Rs 8,110 crore from 212 anchor investors at the upper price of Rs 1,119 per share. Named participants include sovereign and pension investors such as Singapore's GIC, Norges Bank Investment Management, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the Qatar Investment Authority and PSP Investments. Domestic mutual funds and insurers, among them SBI, ICICI Prudential, HDFC, Aditya Birla Sun Life, Nippon India, Kotak Mahindra and LIC, also took part in the anchor book.
What comes next
The offer closes on October 23. Allotment is expected to be finalised by October 26, and the shares are proposed to be listed on the BSE and the NSE on October 28.
The listing is being watched as a gauge of investor appetite for Jio's push beyond telecom into digital services, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. The company has pointed to its subscriber base of about 533 million as the foundation for those businesses, and has said it aims to earn higher-margin technology and enterprise revenue over time.
The offer is on course to surpass the issue size of Hyundai Motor India's Rs 27,870-crore public offering in 2024, which had been the largest in the country by value. Unlike that offer, which consisted entirely of shares sold by existing owners, a large part of Jio's issue is fresh capital.
First-day figures are provisional, and final category-wise numbers will be available once bidding closes on Friday.
