India has a new biggest IPO. Jio Platforms, the Reliance Industries subsidiary that houses Reliance Jio, filed its red herring prospectus on Wednesday, and the numbers inside reset every record Indian markets have. The Jio Platforms IPO opens for public subscription on October 21, closes on October 23, and could raise ₹30,213 crore at the top of its price band. Nothing this big has ever been sold to Indian investors before.
The filing, made with the Registrar of Companies in Gujarat on October 14, caps a process that began with a draft prospectus in June and a SEBI observation letter in August. Now the dates are real, the band is fixed, and the countdown has started.
Reading one: the numbers
The price band is ₹1,065–₹1,119 per share, approved by the IPO committee on October 14, The Hindu reported. At the cap price, the fresh issue of up to 27 crore shares (₹10 face value each) would raise ₹30,213 crore, valuing the company at about ₹10.3 lakh crore, according to Business Standard.
The Jio Platforms IPO breaks with recent record issues in one important way. Hyundai Motor India’s ₹27,858.75 crore issue from October 2024, the current record holder, was entirely an offer for sale, as was LIC’s ₹20,557.23 crore offering. That means the money went to selling shareholders. Jio’s issue is a fresh issue only, The Hindu noted. Every rupee raised stays with the company.
The small print matters too, per the RHP details. The lot size is 12 shares, so one lot costs ₹13,428 at the cap price. Eligible employees get a ₹54 discount per share under a ₹500 crore reservation, and ₹2,500 crore is reserved for Reliance Industries shareholders: individuals and HUFs who held RIL shares as of October 14.
And here is the detail most headlines will skip: that October 14 cut-off is already past. If you bought Reliance shares this morning hoping for a reserved quota in the IPO, you are too late. The reservation only recognises those who were shareholders on the filing date.
Jio Platforms IPO: the signals underneath
Read the filing twice and the structure says more than the size. A fresh issue of this scale is a war chest, not an exit. Over the past decade Jio has moved from mobile connectivity into broadband, cloud computing, enterprise services and artificial intelligence, Business Standard noted, and this money funds that second act rather than enriching early backers.
The financials give the war chest something to stand on. For FY26, Jio Platforms reported revenue from operations of ₹1,46,885 crore, up 14.6 percent, net profit of ₹30,049 crore, up 15.1 percent, and EBITDA of ₹76,255 crore with a margin of 51.91 percent, per PTI. Those are not startup numbers. They are the numbers of a company that already prints money and wants to print more of it.
There is a contrast worth sitting with. While Zoho freezes pay hikes as AI costs bite across the industry, Jio is raising the largest sum in Indian market history to spend on exactly that frontier. One company’s cost headache is another’s investment thesis.
It is also worth remembering how this started. Ten years ago, Jio launched with free voice calls and data prices that collapsed the market, rewiring how India uses the internet. A decade later, the company that made data cheap is asking the public for ₹30,213 crore to make intelligence cheap. Same playbook, bigger stakes.
The dates on your desk
October 14: RHP filed with the Registrar of Companies, Gujarat. October 19: anchor investor bidding. October 21 to 23: public subscription. October 28: expected listing, per The Hindu. Between the anchor book and the listing, roughly nine days will decide the mood.
The timing is no accident either. The IMF has just raised India’s growth forecast to 7 percent for the next two years, citing resilient domestic demand, and the primary market is feeding off that confidence. It opens in the heart of the festival quarter, when even UPI merchant charges are being kept on hold past Diwali rather than risk spoiling the spending mood.
On October 28, Jio Platforms lists. Somewhere a first-time investor will watch the ticker the way cricket fans watch a debutant’s first ball, equal parts hope and nerves. The honest question is not whether the listing pops on day one. It is whether a company that spent ten years making data cheap can spend the next ten making AI pay. The Jio Platforms IPO is just the ticket price for finding out.