Public bidding for the largest share sale in India's corporate history opened on Wednesday, as Jio Platforms, the digital and telecom arm of Mukesh Ambani's Reliance conglomerate, launched its $3.2 billion initial public offering. The public subscription window, which began on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, will remain open until Friday, October 23, giving investors three days to bid for a slice of one of the most closely watched companies in the country's equity markets.
The offering is the biggest share sale India has ever seen, surpassing previous landmark listings such as those of Hyundai Motor India and the National Stock Exchange. It is also the first public offering from the Reliance group in two decades — the conglomerate's first since 2006 — making it a generational event for investors who have watched Reliance reshape industries from refining and petrochemicals to retail and now digital services.
At the price band announced for the issue, the IPO values Jio Platforms at up to $108.3 billion. Once the shares begin trading on October 28, that valuation would place Jio among the biggest companies in India by market capitalisation, putting it in the top tier of the country's listed giants and underlining the scale at which the Ambani group is bringing its telecom and digital business to the public markets.
The price band for the issue has been set at between 1,065 rupees and 1,119 rupees per share. In a book-built offering of this kind, investors place bids within that range and the final offer price is discovered through the demand that accumulates during the bidding window — a mechanism designed to let the market, rather than the issuer alone, determine what the shares are worth at listing.
Demand from large institutional investors has already been striking. Before the public offer opened, Jio allotted shares worth $853 million to global and domestic investors in its anchor and allocated portion, with names such as the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and BlackRock participating.
That reserved portion attracted bids totalling more than $25 billion — demand roughly thirty times the value of the shares on offer — signalling deep confidence among the world's biggest money managers before a single retail bid had been placed.
Anchor investors play a special role in Indian offerings: their early, committed bids — placed before the public window opens — set the tone for the book and give the market a first read on institutional pricing appetite.
When anchors of the calibre of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and BlackRock commit in size, and the reserved portion draws more than $25 billion in demand, it typically emboldens other funds to participate and can shape sentiment well beyond the anchor book itself.
Ordinary investors have not been left out of the equation. Retail investors, along with employees and existing Reliance shareholders, can participate in the offer, and roughly one-third of the shares on sale have been reserved for retail bidders.
Such reservations are designed to give small investors a meaningful foothold in marquee offerings, and a high retail subscription would spread ownership of the country's biggest share sale across a broad base of households rather than concentrating it entirely with institutions.
The company going public is no ordinary debutant. Jio Platforms is backed by some of the most prominent names in global investing, including Meta and Google alongside institutional investors, and it is home to India's biggest telecom company, with more than 500 million subscribers.
That makes Jio the world's second-largest telecom operator operating in a single country, behind only China Mobile — a position built on the network that upended India's mobile market with low-cost data.
The road to the listing has been a long one. Mukesh Ambani first promised in 2019 that Jio would be listed within five years, but those plans slipped, with delays through 2025. At one stage the group was preparing a filing for as early as March, but that timetable was pushed back after the Iran war dampened appetite for new share offerings. The October launch therefore closes a years-long wait for investors who have tracked every signal about the timing of the debut.
Analysts are watching the issue as a major test of global appetite for new share offerings, at a moment when investors are scrutinising companies linked to artificial intelligence and other high-growth themes. A successful $3.2 billion sale would send a strong signal that risk appetite for large new listings remains intact, while a weak reception would raise harder questions about valuations and timing for the pipeline of offerings behind it.
The issue is also a test of India's own equity culture. The country's markets have seen a surge of retail participation in recent years, and a retail reservation of about a third of India's largest-ever offering is a direct appeal to that new class of investors. Whether households respond with the enthusiasm they have shown for smaller recent listings will be one of the clearest reads on the depth of domestic demand.
For the Reliance group itself, the listing marks the return of the Ambani name to India's primary markets after a two-decade absence — the first offering since 2006. It also crystallises, in a public-market valuation, the worth of the digital and telecom bet that has been among the most consequential business builds in modern India.
What happens next is straightforward. With bidding closing on Friday, the focus will shift to the final pricing and allotment process, followed by the listing and the start of trading on October 28.
The sheer size of the offer sets it apart from anything the Indian market has absorbed before: a $3.2 billion sale requires sustained demand across institutions, high-net-worth individuals and retail investors alike, and the bidding figures released at the end of each day will reveal how aggressively each segment bids within the 1,065 to 1,119 rupees range.
A strong close to the book on Friday would not only validate the $108.3 billion valuation but also encourage other large issuers that have been waiting on the sidelines for a moment of demonstrated market depth. Between now and then, the subscription numbers will be parsed for clues about how the landmark sale is progressing.
(Reporting based on Reuters and Channel News Asia.)