New Delhi, Oct 21 Jio Platforms Ltd’s (JPL) public offer has been fully subscribed within 100 minutes of opening on Wednesday, making it the fastest-ever subscribed IPO.
The Rs 30,213 crore offer, with a price band of Rs 1,065 to Rs 1,119 per share, drew the first rush from institutions, with the portion marked for Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs) crossing full subscription in the first 10 minutes and almost 2x in under 30 minutes, according to data on BSE website.
The QIB portion then crossed 2.86 times, while the issue overall was subscribed 0.83 times. Within 100 minutes of opening, the overall book crossed full subscription, as per the data.
The issue stays open until October 23. It is set to exceed Hyundai Motor India’s Rs 27,870 crore 2024 IPO and become India’s largest by value.
At the top end of its Rs 1,065-to-Rs 1,119 price band, Jio is valued at roughly USD 108 billion.
The issue is a fresh offering of up to 27 crore shares, and no offer-for-sale component means existing shareholders are not selling.
On Monday, the company allotted shares worth about Rs 8,110 crore to 212 anchor investors at Rs 1,119 apiece, the top end of its price band, ahead of the public offering. Bids for the anchor allocation exceeded Rs 2.5 lakh crore, more than 30 times the amount available, according to people familiar with the matter. One person put total demand at about USD 26 billion.
Jio Platforms is betting that its technology, artificial intelligence and cloud ambitions will drive growth beyond telecom, Managing Director Akash Ambani said on Tuesday, pitching the Reliance Industries unit as a technology company ahead of what is set to be India’s biggest-ever initial public offering.
“There is no either-or at Jio: the network is our technology,” Ambani said in an interview with PTI, highlighting the company’s in-house 5G core, cloud-native radio access network and software platform serving 533.3 million customers.
“Connectivity was the first product we built on that platform. Digital services, AI and cloud are what we are layering on top of it now,” he said.
The IPO comes as investors assess whether the country’s largest telecom operator can convert its vast customer base into higher-margin revenue from digital services, enterprise technology and AI, as subscriber growth alone becomes a less powerful driver of expansion.
(PTI News)
