New Delhi: Jio Platforms' mega initial public offering has set a global record, becoming the first public issue anywhere in the world to attract more than one crore applications, sources said on Friday. The milestone, reached with five hours still left before the issue closed, cements the offering's place in capital markets history and underlines the extraordinary retail and institutional appetite for what is India's largest-ever IPO.
The offering has surpassed the previous global record of around 97 lakh applications set by Waaree Energies, and has also outstripped earlier Indian record-holders including Bajaj Housing Finance. It is being closely watched as a test of investor appetite for large listings at a time when AI-linked stocks are facing increased scrutiny worldwide.
By 12:03 pm on Friday, Jio Platforms' IPO had drawn bids for 136.32 crore shares against 19.75 crore shares on offer — an overall subscription of almost seven times. Institutional demand is leading the charge. Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs) bid for 70.85 crore shares against 4.90 crore reserved, a subscription of 14.46 times.
Domestic financial institutions — banks, financial institutions and insurers — accounted for 34.51 crore shares, foreign institutional investors for 26.95 crore, and mutual funds for 4.40 crore.
Non-Institutional Investors subscribed 9.45 times. Retail Individual Investors bid for 17.19 crore shares against 8.50 crore on offer, or 2.02 times. The shareholder reservation portion was subscribed 5.68 times, while the employee reservation stood at 2.48 times.
The IPO comprises an entirely fresh issue of 27 crore shares. At the upper end of the price band, Jio Platforms will raise about Rs 30,213 crore and command a valuation of roughly USD 108 billion. Notably, neither parent Reliance Industries Ltd nor any of its other existing shareholders is selling shares in the offering — there is no offer-for-sale component, meaning all the money raised flows into the company.
The anchor book had already signalled the frenzy to come. Jio Platforms had raised about Rs 8,110 crore from 212 anchor investors on October 19, allotting shares at Rs 1,119 a piece — the upper end of the price band. The anchor book reportedly attracted bids exceeding Rs 2.5 lakh crore, more than 30 times the allocation available.
Investors included global asset managers and sovereign wealth funds such as BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, GIC and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
Jio Platforms plans to use up to Rs 27,500 crore of the proceeds to repay borrowings at Reliance Jio Infocomm, its wholly-owned subsidiary. The remaining proceeds will support capital expenditure, including investments in technology and digital services, and working capital requirements.
JPL Managing Director Akash Ambani has said that Jio Platforms is betting that its technology, artificial intelligence and cloud ambitions will drive growth beyond telecom. "There is no either-or at Jio: the network is our technology," Ambani said in an interview with PTI, highlighting the company's in-house 5G core, cloud-native radio access network and software platform serving 533.3 million customers. "Connectivity was the first product we built on that platform. Digital services, AI and cloud are what we are layering on top of it now," he said.
Jio is part of the Ambani family's Reliance Industries, a company often seen by Indian investors as a long-term wealth generator. Reliance shares have returned around 900 per cent since 2006, beating the benchmark Nifty index's 685 per cent return, according to LSEG data. Jio's telecoms business, launched in 2016, disrupted the market by offering free voice and data, hitting rivals Bharti Airtel and Vodafone-Idea.
Today, on the basis of customers in a single country, Jio's 500 million-plus users are second only to China Mobile's.
The record-breaking subscription figures have been celebrated across Dalal Street as a sign of the depth and maturity of India's retail investor base.
The fact that a single issue could draw more than one crore applications — a figure no public offering anywhere in the world has achieved — speaks to the structural changes in Indian capital markets over the past decade: the spread of demat accounts into small towns, the ease of applying through UPI-based applications, and a generation of first-time investors for whom IPOs have become the default entry point into equities.
The IPO's success is also a validation of the bet that India's digital economy story still has room to run. Even as AI-linked stocks face scrutiny globally, investors have backed Jio's pitch that its future lies not just in telecom subscriptions but in the layers being built on top of its network — digital services, artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure.
The 14.46-times QIB subscription, led by domestic financial institutions, suggests that the smartest money in the market is buying that narrative.
For Reliance Industries, the listing is the culmination of a decade-long build-out. What began as a telecom disruptor that offered free voice and data in 2016 — a move that reshaped Indian mobile telephony and forced industry-wide consolidation — has been repositioned as a technology platform with ambitions far beyond connectivity.
The Rs 30,213 crore raise, entirely fresh capital, gives the company the war chest to pursue those ambitions without diluting the parent's stake through an offer-for-sale.
Market watchers will now turn their attention to the listing. With demand of the scale witnessed — total bids reportedly running into several lakh crore rupees of demand when anchor interest is included — the grey market premium and the eventual listing-day performance will be parsed for what they say about valuations in India's primary market. If the listing sustains the momentum of the subscription, it could set the tone for a pipeline of large IPOs waiting in the wings.
For now, though, the numbers speak for themselves: one crore applications, nearly seven times subscription, and a global record that no public issue anywhere in the world has matched. India's biggest IPO has become the world's most applied-for one — and Dalal Street has a new benchmark to beat.
The record also carries a symbolic weight for India's markets. Crossing one crore applications with hours of bidding still left means the issue was oversubscribed in interest long before it closed — a show of confidence that few global offerings can claim. Whether measured by applications, demand or ambition, Jio Platforms' debut has redrawn the map of what an Indian IPO can achieve.
(Reporting based on The Telegraph India and The Tribune.)