NEW DELHI: According to TechCrunch, Jio Platforms, the digital arm of billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries, is seeking to raise as much as $3.2 billion in what could become India's biggest initial public offering.
In a stock exchange filing on Wednesday, Reliance said Jio had set a price band of ₹1,065 to ₹1,119 per share for an offering of up to 270 million new shares. Anchor investor bidding is set for October 19, with the IPO open for subscription from October 21 to October 23.
At the top of the range, the listing would value Jio at about ₹10.3 trillion, or roughly $108.3 billion, TechCrunch said. In 2020 the company was valued at up to $65 billion, when Facebook, now Meta, invested $5.7 billion and Google committed $4.5 billion.
Even at the bottom of the price band, the offering would overtake Hyundai Motor India's $3.3 billion IPO in 2024, the country's largest so far. Launched in 2016, Jio is India's biggest telecom operator, with more than 524 million subscribers as of March 31, and has expanded into broadband and cloud services.
According to its prospectus, Jio's revenue rose nearly 12% year on year to ₹391.7 billion (about $4.1 billion) in the June quarter, while net profit climbed 9% to ₹77.6 billion (around $816 million). The company plans to use up to ₹275 billion of the proceeds to repay debt at its telecom unit, Reliance Jio Infocomm.
The IPO comes as Elon Musk has stepped up criticism of Ambani, accusing him of trying to keep Starlink out of India, TechCrunch reported. Indian authorities have rejected Musk's claims.