Jio's $3.8 billion IPO lands in the longest slump since 2001

By Strota Newsroom · 2026-10-05 · How Strota reports

India's largest share sale is being prepared for a market that has just posted its longest losing run in 25 years. Jio Platforms, the Reliance Industries unit that holds the country's biggest mobile network, is expected to raise about $3.8 billion, open for subscription after Dussehra and before October 23, and list by the end of October, according to a PTI report carried by Business Standard and The Hindu BusinessLine. The wire reports call it India's largest public offer. The week the roadshows concluded, the Nifty 50 closed 3.1 per cent lower, its eighth consecutive weekly decline and the longest such streak since 2001.

That eight-week slide is the backdrop the issue will be priced against. Across the eight weeks the Nifty fell about 8.7 per cent. On the last trading day, Thursday, it closed at 22,421.95 after slipping 198.50 points, or 0.88 per cent, and the Sensex ended at 71,909.70, down 2.7 per cent for the week. Foreign portfolio investors sold Rs 44,010 crore of Indian equities in September, provisional exchange data reported by Bajaj Broking showed, while domestic institutions bought Rs 76,030 crore, absorbing much of the supply.

The unusual part is not that foreign investors are selling. It is where some of the money is going instead. In 2026 through the end of September they put $5.9 billion into India's primary market while selling $33.7 billion of listed equities in the secondary market, The Economic Times reported. The same investors who are selling shares a household can buy are buying the new issues a household can also apply for.

What a household is being asked to buy is now public, because the company's draft prospectus, filed on 19 June 2026, is a document rather than a rumour. Jio Platforms is a technology company whose subsidiary, Reliance Jio Infocomm, served 524.4 million customers in India as of 31 March 2026. Its average revenue per user was Rs 214 a month in the exit quarter, and its network carried 241.4 billion gigabytes of data across the year.

The offer itself is simple to describe. The company will issue up to 27 crore fresh equity shares, about 2.9 per cent of its post-issue equity base. There is no offer-for-sale component: the draft marks that column not applicable, which means none of the money goes to an existing shareholder selling out. Every rupee raised goes to the company.

The largest single use of that money is not building anything new. The draft lists two objects, prepayment in full or in part of outstanding borrowings of Reliance Jio Infocomm, and general corporate purposes. Mint, reading the same document, put the borrowing to be repaid at about Rs 27,500 crore. A subscriber is normally told an offering funds expansion. Here it mostly retires the telecom arm's debt.

The size of the business is not in doubt. For the year ended 31 March 2026 the restated numbers in the draft show revenue of Rs 1,46,885 crore and profit after tax of Rs 30,049 crore, against Rs 26,109 crore a year earlier. Reliance Industries holds 66.43 per cent of the company. Meta's affiliate holds 9.98 per cent, Google's 7.73 per cent, and funds including Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, KKR and Vista each hold 2.31 per cent. It is the first public offering from the Reliance group since 2008, the reports said.

The price is the part that is not settled. Sources cited by PTI put the base enterprise valuation at $143-146 billion, or at least Rs 12 trillion. An earlier report pointed to a figure nearer $137 billion. Those are unnamed sources speaking to a wire, not a price in a document: the draft prospectus leaves the offer price blank. Final pricing is decided later, in the red herring prospectus, against whatever the market will pay in the week the issue opens.

That is where the eight-week slide matters. The market regulator gave its final observations on 28 August, which lets the issue proceed, but permission sets neither the date nor the price. A company can wait, and a market that has fallen for eight weeks gives both the seller and the buyer a reason to argue about the number. In the Nifty 50, 42 of the 50 stocks are now trading below their 200-day moving average, The Economic Times reported on Monday, a plain measure of how broad the weakness is.

There is a counterweight in the same reporting. More than two dozen issues have been announced or launched since 1 July, nearly matching the 28 recorded in the first half of 2026, so the supply of new paper is not slowing even as the secondary market slides. New issues are also where foreign money is still going, even as it leaves listed stocks.

For a household the mechanics are narrower than the macro. An allotment depends on how many times the issue is subscribed, not on the index level. The draft reserves separate portions for retail and non-institutional investors, for eligible employees and for eligible Reliance Industries shareholders. The size of each reservation is not in the draft, and will be set out in the final prospectus.

What the record does not establish is the listing price, and it does not establish that the slide ends. A pending share sale is not itself a market event; it is a document that becomes tradable on a dated morning. The valuation figures in circulation come from bankers and not from the company, and the draft is a June document whose numbers will be restated for the final papers. Whether an issue of this size clears at that valuation depends on the week it is priced in, which is not here yet.

So the two facts sit together without resolving. The country is preparing its largest share sale into its longest losing run since 2001, and the money it raises will mostly repay debt rather than build capacity. The Nifty lost 3.1 per cent in the week the roadshows concluded. Nothing in the prospectus says what price that market will agree to, and nothing in the market's record says the queue of new issues will stop. The gap between the two is the story.

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