Jio Earmarks Rs275 Bn for debt repayment from Rs302 Bn IPO; 40% of Jio’s net additions are coming from outside tier one and tier two cities.
FinTech BizNews Service
Mumbai, 15 October, 2026: Jio Platforms’ largest-ever IPO in India will be open for the public subscription on 21 October 2026, Wednesday and close on 23 October 2026, Friday. It is a fresh issue of 27 crore equity shares. The total issue size stands at Rs30,213 crore at the upper price band.
(L to R): Uday Kotak, Isha Ambani, Akash Ambani and Chief Executive Officer of Jio Platforms Pankaj Pawar
The historic IPO of Jio Platforms comes from the RIL Group after nearly two decades. Uday Kotak, Chairman, Kotak Investment Banking, spoke on behalf of all the book-running lead managers on an occasion of Jio’s IPO press conference on Thursday at Ghansoli in Navi Mumbai. Mr Uday Kotak said: “The RIL Group, after Jio's listing, will be India’s largest conglomerate basis listed market cap under the transformational leadership of Chairman Shri Mukesh Ambani over the last few decades.”
India’s largest ever IPO
“It will be India’s largest ever IPO And, it is also a testament to the development of the next generation of leadership – Akash Ambani and Isha Ambani – who are building new-age businesses across Digital Services and Retail… of course, under the watchful eye of the leader, the father.”
What differentiates the Jio platform? Uday Kotak answered: “53 crore customers. Extraordinary execution. And it's transformed the lives of an individual who got much lower price for the service and democratised connectivity in our country.
Jio is also the only player globally with proprietary end-to-end digital connectivity stack. From a data-scarce nation of less than one crore 4G customers to a data-abundant nation of 100 crore 4G and 5G customers. It's all happened in the last 10 years.
Uday Kotak added; “All these have translated to undisputed leadership in the marketplace in India, both in mobility and home broadband customers and subscribers. Revenue of Rs 1,46,885 crores, EBITDA of Rs 76,000-plus crores, close to an 18% growth is quite impressive at scale.
Jio’s IPO launch is one such moment. It provides investors an opportunity to participate and benefit from the next phase of digital growth.”
Key DRHP Details
The funds are designated to prepay borrowings at its core telecom subsidiary, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. (RJIL).
The repayment focuses on external commercial borrowings (ECBs) raised in dollar and yen terms from a global consortium of lenders (including Bank of America, HSBC, Citibank, and State Bank of India, among others)
The offering comprises a fresh issue of up to 270 million equity shares with no offer-for-sale (OFS) component, meaning all net proceeds go directly into the company's balance sheet.
Any net proceeds left after the RJIL debt prepayment will be allocated toward general corporate purposes (capped at 25% of the gross proceeds)
Akash Ambani, Managing Director, Jio Platforms Ltd, today at the Jio IPO press conference spoke about unprecedented initiatives of formative years as well as past & recent glorious achievements.
Following is the gist of powerful speech made by Akash Ambani, Managing Director, Jio Platforms:
Today we stand at 53 crore Indians that have trusted us as their digital connectivity partner. All of this in just the last 10 years.
We have an EBITDA of over Rs 76,000 crores in 10 years. That has put us in growing faster than even the global tech companies. The last three years has seen an EBITDA growth of 17.8%, 53.3% EBITDA margins in the quarter one of this financial year.
Today, Jio carries over 60% of India's data traffic. We started our 5G rollout just three years ago, and today we're the world's largest 5G base outside of China. And we did the fastest 4G to 5G migration anywhere in the world.
Average Download Speed Of Almost 200 Mbps
Today we stand at 43.7 GB per customer per month, and that shows that we built a technology platform for India from India, but leads global standards in just the last 10 years.
We've always believed that India has been a data scarce nation because it was supply constrained. Jio was the 14th operator to enter the market in 2016.
At that point of time, the pricing per GB was almost at Rs 228 per GB on usage. The download speed was two and a half Mbps. The total universe of data customers in India was less than 70 million, and the usage of these 70 million was almost 200 MB per month. We saw that as our biggest opportunity, to change India from a data scarce nation to a data abundant nation, and that's what we've enabled 10 years from now. As the industry together today, we've grown from 14 players to just four, and today we deliver 68 Mbps of total download speed across India, Rs 7.5 per GB, and about 26.7 GBs per customer per month, as the industry put together.
Today, across 53 crore Indians, we give an average download speed of almost 200 Mbps. That's twice as fast as the other operators.
Broadband: India from 155th to number 1
Our pricing per GB stands at the lowest anywhere else in the world, at almost Rs 4.9 rupees per GB, and this is on usage. And our data consumption stood at 43.7 GB per user per month, and that is what has pivoted India from being the 155th nation of broadband in penetration and consumption in the world to number one in just 10 years.
Technology Stack That Cuts Across 4 Areas
We were inspired by Digital India, Make in India, and contributing to a Viksit Bharat 2047. What we have now built is an end-to-end technology stack that cuts across four areas: a fully autonomous network, as you saw in the video, for our 5G mobile broadband subscribers, including our 4G; a fully integrated home platform; and devices, operating systems, and digital applications that enhance the life of every Jio user.
We're the only Indian company that has ranked in the top 20 global companies in terms of patents filed, according to the WIPO. Over 7,220 patents have been filed by a talented base of over 12,000 Jio engineers.
1.4 Trillion-Dollar Digital Economy By FY31
How we can best convert India to digital society. Today we see a 1.4 trillion-dollar digital economy by FY31, and how we are going to try to address to take a huge market share of this.
We build our own proprietary stack to serve our customers better, to give them services that they have never witnessed before, and that is something that we can stitch in terms of the entire consumer experience better than anyone else.
The second thing is our digital gateway. Because we have an understanding of these customers from three areas that no one else has: a true demographic, their propensity to spend, and the ability to consume additional services.
We have over 336 digital subscriptions across OTT and music we do for our Jio customers. For our partners, we're able to drive an insight to activate better than anyone else.
Another example is of Gemini. Google in India is also a big company, over a billion users on their surfaces, and of course Gemini being their flagship product.
What we were able to do, like we did with the data market, was co-create a new market, and today that has resulted in Gemini adding 30 million new subscribers for its base. For me, what that really means is that if we can serve our Jio users with the best affordable services and the highest quality of services to make sure that there is a competitive advantage when they are on our Jio network, that's the value I want to drive for our customers.
Voice AI Travel Service
Today, because of our end-to-end 5G capability and our core that we have deployed, we can deploy voice AI travel service to 53 crore Indians, and that really democratises intelligence in our country, just how we did with data. We can drive this at no additional cost for the user, and accessible to all our users at the same time.
Today we carry 20 billion minutes of voice on our network on a daily basis. That's the largest in the country. We will enable simple use cases of productivity.
A summarisation and transcription across 12 Indian languages, distributed to 53 crore Indians, we are the only player in town that can do that.
The infrastructure very hard to replicate
The infrastructure part of our business makes our business very hard to replicate. We rolled out 5G in just 19 months. And this is a laborious activity in terms of putting up our towers. In the 19 months, that we covered 99% of India's living population, we were putting up a tower every minute of a 12-hour working space, a working day. And that's the efficiency that we want to drive our businesses with.
We have the largest spectrum bank in the industry.
Today, we see a universe of adding close to 340 mn new customers on our mobility base. 100 million new citizens of India will get a SIM card for the first time because of the age criteria over the next five years. 240 million subscribers that sit on 2G networks will migrate to 4G and 5G networks faster than ever. It becomes now very cost uneconomical and laborious to operate a 2G network. We've seen the entire device ecosystem shift. If we deliver the highest quality of services at the most affordable, and services that none of our other competitors can launch, to our customers, this gives us our right to win these customers. Just as an example, in the last financial year, we added three times more net active additions than our nearest competitor.
Fiber to connect 300 mn homes, 100 million pay TV households
We started laying fiber to connect homes since 2010. We have today home pass of close to 40 million homes. India's demographic is approximately 300 million homes and a 100 million pay TV households as we speak today. We see that as our biggest growth entry. Today, the fiber networks have to operate on right of way, society permission, building permission, and then we do the customer connect.
Our technology operates on the 5G unlicensed band, the Wi-Fi band, and today, 40% of our new additions are acquired using that technology. On a 30 million base, six and a half million customers are already operating on this technology. The astonishing number is 40% of my net additions are coming from outside tier one and tier two cities.
What we showcased earlier this year was taking the next generation that can deliver 5 gig download and 1 gig upload, and that is giving the promise of our highest quality. What we want to deliver to the home is not a broadband service, but an integrated consumption story for broadband, TV, and digital applications.
Today, we are able to give our television OS over five hours of consumption on a daily basis to our current customer base. It is the preferred destination of consumption for any Jio home, including people who have a smart TV. For me, this is our biggest growth engine for the coming years – to transform our 30 million base to a 100 million base. Today we add about 67.5% of India's net fixed broadband additions. And again, one of the technologies we are using is on our own proprietary technology, which sits on the unlicensed panel. We call it UBR.
India today has 3,50,000 lease lines. Today, we want to make sure that we are not only finding for broadband market share, but the entire digital services market share, which is probably addressed in a $56-billion-dollar market opportunity.
65% of the bank branches connected on Jio
Today, 65% of the bank branches of the country are connected on Jio. What we have enabled for them is not just ubiquitous high-grade security broadband, but also video surveillance that gives us an innate ability for them to serve their customers better, and security use cases. And this is one such example. I can go sector by sector, whether it be hospitality, BFSI, and other sectors, to tell you about our enterprise.
International Roadmap
Our international roadmap is very different and a unique playbook that we are trying to pioneer in the world, what we think is that the end-to-end technology stack that we have created, deployed, and operate gives us an ability to partner with telecom partners across the world and really do this in a capex-like manner.
We believe there is a huge market opportunity all across the world, including the developed and developing nations.
Monetisation Ability
We will choose our partners very carefully on the basis of the market opportunity, so that it would make a significant difference to our balance sheet and the ability for us to partner deeply for the growth of their business. And this is the intended monetisation ability that we have for our end-to-end technology stack.
Revenue Growth Rate Of Around 15%
Last three years, we have grown at a revenue growth rate of circa 15%. Our revenue has grown from Rs. 1,09,000 crore to over Rs. 1,46,000 crores in the last three years, and that's a CAGR of 15.8%. Our EBITDA, from 50% to the June quarter of this year, has gone to 53%, and our EBITDA growth is at 54,000 crores to 76,000 crores. That shows our business is in a very healthy and at a high growth rate.
Significant Market Opportunity On 4 Segments
There is a significant market opportunity on four segments: the mobility segment, the home segment, the enterprise segment, and the end-to-end monetisation of our core technologies. The proprietary end-to-end technology stack has given us the ability to play across the value chain and a potential for India to become an exporter of technology rather than an importer of technology.
Extensive future-ready infrastructure
Today, we have over 3,60,000 towers laid over India, and over 1 million rude kilometres of fibre. I've always said that Jio's first mission is to democratise technology to benefit Indians. 6G is on our horizon. What this really means is that we will do 6G as a software upgrade rather than a new infrastructure build out.
Today, we have an EBITDA margin of 53.3 percent, a revenue to free cash flow ratio of 30%. 30% of our revenue flows right into our free cash flow. And an EBITDA less capex of 28.6% of revenue in FY-26. So that's really the five drivers of supporting Jio platforms, and to Isha's point of how we think we can compound our business interest.
Isha Ambani, Director, Jio Platforms, also spoke about the Reliance philosophy of building businesses.
Isha Ambani stated:" First, ideas are backed with a very long-term perspective. So, at Reliance, we don’t just build for today or tomorrow, but we really think about what’s going to come in decades from now.
The second is scale. I think for us the question to answer when it comes to scale is what is the type of scale that is required to fundamentally change the economics of the industry that we operate in.
And third is execution. To know Reliance is to know that we are a deeply technical company. And execution is very much a hard-coded habit across our entire organisation. It’s what allows us to meet our goals and to stay true to our mission.
Financial prudence is embedded in our DNA.
In 2019, my father made a commitment to all Reliance shareholders. He said that in 2021, Reliance Industries would be net
debt-free. 2020 came, COVID came along with it, and along with that came a global slowdown.
And yet, nine months ahead of schedule, that promise was delivered on. And that is what shareholder commitment means to us at Reliance.
In terms of financial performance, we steer our businesses towards two North Stars.
The first is that we like to create and protect fortress-like balance sheets.
And the second is that we steer our businesses towards generating compounding free cash flow. Over the years, this has allowed us to run a compounding cycle of building, investing, scaling, generating cash, and then reinvesting in growth.
‘Growth is Life’ is our motto, and it is something that we have our eyes on constantly at Reliance.
In 1977, my grandfather Dhirubhai Ambani took Reliance Industries public. That’s almost 50 years ago today. Since then, Reliance Industries has delivered a 29% annualized return. Today, I remember my grandfather with deep affection and gratitude.
Three generations later, Akash, Anant, and I remain absolutely married to our motto, which is ‘Growth is Life,’ and we carry forward not only his vision but also the trust of millions of shareholders who believed in his vision and made it their own."
