Mumbai: Reliance's telecom and digital arm made its market debut at a valuation only its parent can beat. Jio Platforms listed at ₹1,358 on the BSE and NSE on Wednesday, 21.36% above its ₹1,119 issue price, and closed at ₹1,417.50 — up 26.67% on the issue price. It touched ₹1,423.90 during the day.
At close the company was worth ₹13,05,241.98 crore on the BSE, making it India's second-most valuable listed company behind Reliance Industries at ₹15,67,744.61 crore. Bharti Airtel slid to third at roughly ₹12.16 lakh crore. The two Reliance companies together are worth ₹28.72 lakh crore.
The ₹30,213-crore IPO, India's largest, was subscribed 22.19 times. It was fully subscribed within 100 minutes of opening on October 21 and drew more than 1.3 crore applications. The qualified institutional buyers' portion was booked 70.55 times and the retail portion 2.72 times. Demand across the public issue and the anchor placement topped ₹7.4 lakh crore.
Jio has more than 53 crore customers and counts Meta and Google among its backers. It was valued at up to $108.3 billion before listing.
What makes the debut striking is that Jio trails Airtel on the metrics that usually decide telecom valuations. For FY26, Jio reported consolidated revenue of ₹1.5 lakh crore against Airtel's ₹2.1 lakh crore. Its net profit of ₹30,064 crore was a shade below Airtel's ₹30,113 crore. Jio's average revenue per user was ₹214 against Airtel's ₹257.2, which has climbed past ₹260 in recent quarters. Jio has 52.4 crore Indian subscribers to Airtel's 48.2 crore, but Airtel earns more from each of them, and a New Street Research report puts Airtel's realisation at ₹9.6 per gigabyte against Jio's ₹4.9.
The difference is positioning. Airtel sells itself as a telecom conglomerate. Jio sells itself as a technology company, and its listing-day pitch was built on artificial intelligence, cloud and digital services. "We will once again lead the next wave of technological transformation, making the world's most advanced technologies affordable, accessible and meaningful for every Indian," Managing Director Akash Ambani said at the NSE ceremony.
On listing day, Reliance Industries fell 3.19% to ₹1,158 and the Sensex closed 352 points lower. On Thursday the Jio stock added about 3.5% and Reliance became the Nifty's biggest support.