Kolkata: The buzz around Jio Platforms IPO is getting louder. The word has spread that Jio could be filing the Draft Red Herring Prospectus with market regulator Sebi in the coming few days. The issuance could be an Offer For Sale where current stakeholder will be diluting their shareholding. According to media rpeorts, Jio Platforms, which is under Reliance Industries, is negotiating with more than a dozen foreign investors to dilute about 8% of their stakes in the company through the public issue. Google and Meta hold stakes in this venture of Mukesh Ambani.
The Jio IPO is expected to hit the market when the primary market is suffering from poor investor appetite, thanks first to a period of prolonged volatility and then to the Iran US war which is in its fourth week and has created inprecedented crisis in both the crude oil and natural gas market almost in all countries including India. While the focus of analsysts is fixed on the Jio IPO, there is a larger question — can the Jio IPO inject life into the primary market of the country?
The state of the primary market
Data from the primary market reveals only 18 public issues have gone through to the listing stage so far in 2026. The number of upcoming and ongoing IPOs is only 4. This is a sharp drop from the state of affairs in 2024 and 2025, when the primary market set records in the number of IPOs and then broke it in the next year. In 2025, India topped the global IPO market with as many as 367 public issues, which puts it at a monthly average of more than 20. That’s a number the Indian market is yet to reach in the first three months of 2026. This appears dramatically poor when compared against the projections of several agencies that in 2026 the IPO market going to surge even from the heightened base of 2025.
A few days ago, PhonePe said it was putting on hold its plan for an IPO as there has been a marked appetite of investors in the midst of the war between Iran and the US-Israel combine. The energy crisis, the declining value of the rupee against the US dollar, the huge FII outflow and the potential impact in inflation has eroded investor confidence in both the secondary and primary markets, analysts point out.
DHRP by end of March?
While agency reports say that the DRHP could be filed in March itself, investors will be curious to know the valuation of the venture. Two prominent global brokerages had put forward widely differing valuation figures of the business, which is the second largest in telecom after China Mobile. While JP Morgan estimated the valuation at $136 billion, Jefferies pegged it mich higher at $180 billion. The notes were issued in 2025 and the figure can change now.
“I am sure that it will be a very attractive opportunity for all investors,” Mukesh Ambani, who is the chairman of Reliance Industries, said at the company AGM in August 2025. The listing is expected to be completed by the first half of the current calendar year. Meta holds a 10% stake in Jio Platforms, while Google has 7.7%. Other investors includes Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, KKR, Mubadala, ADIA, TPG, L Catterton, Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, Intel Capital and Qualcomm Ventures.
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