Jio Platforms IPO draws $25 billion in anchor investor bids: Report

Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms has attracted about $25 billion in bids from institutional investors for its $3.2 billion initial public offering (IPO), with demand reaching almost 30 times the quota reserved for anchor investors, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The telecoms, cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) group opened its IPO to institutional investors on Monday. They can bid for up to 30 per cent of the offering, which is exclusively reserved for them, before the issue opens for public subscription on Wednesday.

Fidelity, Singapore’s GIC, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and BlackRock were among the investors that placed bids for the institutional quota, the two people told Reuters.

Jio Platforms allocated shares worth more than 81 billion rupees ($853.31 million) to anchor investors, according to a company filing on Monday. State-run insurer Life Insurance Corporation, French lender BNP Paribas, JPMorgan and India’s largest private-sector lender, HDFC Bank, were among the other institutions allotted shares in the anchor book.

A source told Reuters that bids for the anchor investor portion exceeded 30 times the quota available.

Jio transformed India’s telecoms market in 2016 by offering free voice calls and low-cost data, quickly becoming the country’s largest mobile operator. It now has more than 500 million subscribers and competes with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea.

Led by Mukesh Ambani’s son Akash Ambani, Jio operates Reliance Industries’ telecoms and digital businesses. Its operations span mobile services, fixed broadband, cloud, entertainment, enterprise technology and AI offerings.

The IPO is expected to test how much global investors are willing to pay for Jio’s scale and its expansion into cloud computing and AI.

Jio’s listing follows the September listing of the National Stock Exchange of India, highlighting investor demand for large offerings in the Indian market. It will be the first offering by Reliance since the listing of Reliance Petroleum in 2006.

Indian IPO proceeds have risen 8.3 per cent year-to-date to $12.65 billion compared with the same period last year, according to LSEG data.

A successful listing would place Jio Platforms among India’s four largest listed companies by market capitalisation, behind its parent Reliance, rival Bharti Airtel and HDFC Bank, the country’s largest private-sector lender.

Jio plans to use up to 275 billion Indian rupees ($2.90 billion) of the net proceeds to repay or prepay borrowings of its telecoms subsidiary, Reliance Jio Infocomm.