Jio Platforms Raises Rs 8,110 Crore From Anchors at the Top of Its Range as India's Biggest IPO Opens
Mutual funds, insurers and sovereign investors took about Rs 8,110 crore at Rs 1,119 a share on Monday; the public offer of roughly Rs 30,200 crore runs from Wednesday to Friday.
Wednesday, October 21, 2026/2 min read
India's largest initial public offering opens to ordinary investors today with its anchor book already in hand. Jio Platforms raised about Rs 8,109.8 crore on Monday from anchor investors, allotting roughly 7.25 crore shares at Rs 1,119, the top of its price band, Inc42 reported. Subscription runs from 21 to 23 October.
We covered the terms in our earlier report on the price band. What is new is who actually bought in at the ceiling.
Who bought into the Jio anchor round?
Domestic mutual funds took the biggest slice: 25 funds through 95 schemes bought about 2.48 crore shares, over a third of the round, with SBI, HDFC, ICICI Prudential, Aditya Birla Sun Life and Kotak Mahindra among the names. Insurers and pension funds, including LIC, HDFC Life and SBI Life, took about 97 lakh shares, or 13.4 percent. Global buyers included Fidelity, Allianz, BlackRock, the Government of Singapore, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Goldman Sachs.
The anchor book was reported to have drawn demand of more than 30 times its size. That is an outlet's account of what was bid, not a final allotment figure, so treat it as indicative.
How big is the Jio IPO?
The offer is a fresh issue of up to 27 crore shares, which at the top of the band comes to about Rs 30,213 crore and values the company near Rs 10.3 lakh crore. Business Today, citing Bloomberg, put that at about $108 billion, below earlier hopes of as much as $170 billion, and said more than $20 billion of bids had been reported before the book opened, in its 14 October report.
It is entirely primary. Existing shareholders including Meta, Alphabet, Mubadala and Saudi Arabia's PIF are not selling, Business Today said. Rs 500 crore is reserved for employees and up to Rs 2,500 crore for eligible Reliance Industries shareholders.
Where will the money go?
Most of it is for debt. Rs 27,500 crore is earmarked to prepay part or all of three external commercial borrowings of subsidiary Reliance Jio Infocomm, totalling more than Rs 29,971 crore, with the rest for general corporate purposes, according to an Inc42 explainer. That makes this a deleveraging IPO as much as a growth one: the company is raising equity so that its telecom arm carries less external debt.
When does Jio list, and what is the grey market saying?
Listing is expected on 28 October. Inc42 reports a grey market premium of about Rs 260 a share, which would imply a listing well above the issue price. Grey market figures are unofficial and move fast, so they are a mood indicator, not a forecast.
The next numbers to watch are the subscription multiples at the close on Friday, especially from retail and non-institutional bidders who did not get the anchor price.
Published in The Outspoken Digest
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