India’s biggest-ever public offering is now official. Jio Platforms Limited, the digital services arm of Reliance Industries, filed its Red Herring Prospectus with the Registrar of Companies, Gujarat, on October 14, setting the stage for a landmark stock-market debut that will test the appetite of both domestic and global investors for India’s digital growth story.
The initial public offering will open for subscription on Wednesday, October 21, and close on Friday, October 23. Anchor investor bidding — the institutional pre-allocation round that often sets the tone for retail and HNI demand — is scheduled for Monday, October 19.
The offering is structured entirely as a fresh issue of up to 27 crore equity shares with a face value of ₹10 each. That structure carries one clear implication: every rupee raised goes into Jio Platforms itself rather than to selling shareholders, giving the company a large war chest to deploy across its digital, connectivity and AI businesses.
The issue includes dedicated reservations — up to ₹500 crore worth of shares for eligible employees and up to ₹2,500 crore for existing RIL shareholders, defined as individuals and HUFs holding Reliance shares as of October 14. The shareholder reservation is expected to draw strong interest from the millions of retail investors who already own the parent company’s stock.
While the final price band will be announced with the offering documents, reported numbers put it at ₹1,065 to ₹1,119 per share. At the upper end, the issue would raise approximately ₹30,200 crore — comfortably surpassing the previous record of ₹27,870 crore set by Hyundai Motor India’s listing — and value Jio Platforms at roughly ₹10.3 lakh crore.
The scale of the valuation reflects what Jio Platforms has become: far more than a telecom operator. The company sits at the centre of Reliance’s digital ambitions, spanning mobile and broadband connectivity, cloud, content and the group’s emerging artificial intelligence push — a bundle of businesses that investors will now be able to value on a standalone basis for the first time.
For the Indian primary market, the timing is significant. A record-sized offering will test market depth in the final quarter of the calendar year and could reset benchmarks for how large technology and digital listings are priced in India.
Market watchers will now focus on the price band announcement, the anchor book’s quality on October 19, and the subscription momentum when bidding opens on October 21. With the record books already within reach, the question is no longer whether this is India’s largest IPO — but by how much it beats the last one.
