Before its proposed initial public offering, Jio Platforms has appointed Pankaj Pawar as the Chief Executive Officer i.e. CEO in place of Kiran Thomas. This information was received from the company’s prospectus. The company had submitted the documents for IPO to SEBI in June. The draft letter submitted to the market regulator states that Thomas had resigned from the post of Chief Executive Officer on March 23 and Pawar took charge the next day, March 24. Pawar is also the MD of Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited. Let us also tell you what kind of changes have come to light in Jio platforms before the IPO.
Pankaj Pawar is associated with 2020
The draft IPO document states that 53-year-old Pankaj Mohan Pawar is the Chief Executive Officer of the company and also serves as the MD of Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited. He has been with Reliance Group since 2000 and has nearly three decades of experience in building and growing large consumer and digital services businesses. Thomas was earlier the chairman of Reliance Industries. In the draft document, he is not included among the key management officers of Jio Platforms, even though he has been seen in every presentation and annual general meeting of the company since starting the digital services unit of Reliance Industries. An e-mail was sent to Jio regarding this and a comment was sought, but no response was received from their side.
Who is included in the board?
According to the draft documents, RIL Chairman and MD Mukesh Ambani will join the board of directors of Jio Platforms as chairman and non-executive director. Manoj Harjivandas Modi will be the non-executive director of Jio Platforms and Akash Ambani will be the managing director. His siblings, Isha and Anant, will join the board as non-executive directors. Jio Platforms plans to raise about four billion dollars (Rs 37,700 crore) through IPO.
The world’s second largest mobile operator
According to the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP), Jio Platforms plans to issue up to 27 crore new shares, which is about 2.9 percent of the post-issue equity capital. The objective of this IPO is to unlock value from Jio Platforms, whose business spans across telecommunication, digital services, enterprise solutions and emerging technology ventures. Its telecom unit, Reliance Jio Infocomm, is the world’s second-largest mobile operator in terms of number of subscribers, behind China’s China Mobile. Meta and Google are among the biggest foreign investors in the company. Now, if everything goes well, then Jio’s IPO will become the country’s largest IPO in 2024, leaving behind Hyundai Motor India’s Rs 27,870 crore IPO.
27 crore new shares will be issued
In the proposed IPO of Jio Platforms, up to 27 crore new shares will be issued, whose face value will be Rs 10 per share. The issue price will be decided through book-building process as per SEBI norms. The company has not disclosed the price band or the total size of the offering, which will depend on the final issue price and regulatory approvals. Jio Platforms has previously attracted some of the world’s largest technology and private equity investors. In 2020, the company raised more than US$20 billion from investors like Meta, Google, KKR, Silver Lake and General Atlantic. In this fundraising round, the valuation of the business was estimated between 57 billion to 65 billion US dollars.
