Jio is expected to file its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) for a $4 Bn IPO within this week ahead of Reliance Industries' AGM on Friday
The IPO, set to be one of the biggest in India’s public markets history, is likely to consist only of a fresh issue of shares
Jio first floated plans of an IPO last year, and targeted a listing in the first half of 2026, but only received a go-ahead from the finance ministry for a smaller IPO in March
Reliance Jio
Infocomm, the telecom arm of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), is expected to file its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) for a $4 Bn IPO within this week.
Citing sources, Financial Times reported that the draft papers are likely to be filed ahead of RIL chairman and MD Mukesh Ambani’s speech during the company’s annual general meeting (AGM) on Friday (June 19).
Inc42 has reached out to RIL for comments. The story will be updated on receiving a response.
Announcing the IPO plans for Jio during RIL’s 2025 AGM, Ambani said the company was targeting a listing in the first half of 2026. Initially, the company was awaiting a notification from the government to ease public shareholding norms for big public issues. Subsequently, the markets regulator eased the public float norms, clearing the way for Jio’s mega IPO.
The IPO, set to be one of the biggest in India’s public markets history, is likely to consist only of a fresh issue of shares. The offer-for-sale component was reportedly dropped in the run up to filing the draft papers as investors couldn’t agree on an issue price.
RIL was said to be concerned that existing shareholders’ expectations of a higher valuation could lead to the market not being able to fully absorb the issue and leave no room for value creation post listing.
In April, the conglomerate elevated Ambani’s eldest son Akash Ambani to the position of managing director of Jio Infocomm for a period of five years. He joined Reliance Jio Infocomm as a non-executive director in 2014, and later took over as the chairman in 2022.
Mukesh Ambani chairs Jio Platforms, while his children Akash, Isha and Anant are on the company’s board. Kiran Thomas serves as the CEO of Jio Platforms.
Since entering the telecom market in 2016, Jio has rapidly grown into one of India’s largest digital and telecom players. Its aggressive pricing strategy, coupled with free voice and data plans in the early years, disrupted the sector and boosted internet adoption across the country.
Over time, Jio Platforms, the parent company of Jio Infocomm, expanded beyond telecom into areas such as cloud infrastructure, AI, enterprise services and digital applications. In 2023, RIL partnered with Nvidia to develop AI infrastructure and language models for India. During the India AI Impact Summit held earlier this year, Ambani had announced that Jio Platforms along with Reliance will invest ₹10 Lakh Cr in AI over the next seven years, starting from 2026.
RIL also launched Jio Intelligence, a wholly owned subsidiary of Jio Platforms, in a bid to democratise AI access in India following a similar playbook as its telecom expansion. This will be done by building multi-gigawatt scale data centres and launching a low latency and affordable Edge compute layer. Its strong interest in building AI infrastructure is also likely to attract strong investor interest in Jio.
The company has already drawn significant interest from the likes of global investors over the past years. In 2020, Jio Platforms raised more than $20.5 Bn from investors such as Meta, Google, KKR, Silver Lake and General Atlantic at valuations ranging between $57 Bn and $65 Bn.
Reliance Industries currently owns a 66.43% stake in Jio Platforms, while Facebook parent Meta holds a 9.99% stake in Jio Platforms, which it originally acquired in April 2020 for $5.7 Bn (about ₹43,574 Cr).
On the financial front, Jio Platforms’ net profit rose 13% to ₹7,935 Cr in Q4 FY26 from ₹7,023 Cr in the corresponding quarter last year. Sequentially, profit rose 4% from ₹7,629 Cr. Operating revenue rose 12.6% to ₹38,259 Cr from ₹33,986 Cr in Q4 FY25, while also increasing 2.7% quarter-on-quarter.
The listing comes on the backdrop of a slowed IPO market in India, which was on an accelerated track with multi-billion dollar listings in the pipeline before the US-Iran war hit global oil markets and rattled the rupee. Since then, many companies like Walmart-backed PhonePe, Curefoods, Sify Infinit Space, among others have halted public listing plans.
Source: Inc42 - Startups
