Retail investors fully subscribe Ambani’s Jio IPO on second day, helps rupee recovery

Mumbai: Appetite for the $3.2 billion IPO of billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Jio Platforms kept building on Thursday, the second day of public bidding, with orders reaching 3.47 times the shares on offer and the retail portion fully subscribed, exchange data showed.

In what is set to be India's largest IPO and the first by Reliance in 20 years, the listing is a key plank of Ambani’s long-term vision to turn Reliance from an oil-and-chemicals giant into an “everything company” spanning consumer, retail and technology.

Institutional investors have led demand, with qualified institutional buyers bidding for 9.42 times their quota. Retail investors, for whom around a third of the issue is reserved, fully subscribed their portion within the first two hours of bidding on Thursday.

Investors had flocked to the IPO on Wednesday, the first day of bidding, with orders covering the shares on offer in under two hours and reaching 3.16 times by the end of the day. Institutional investors covered their allotted tranche in 10 minutes, while the overall book was filled within 100 minutes, two people close to the IPO said.

The rapid response has come even as large IPOs in India generally start slowly, with institutional investors often waiting until the final hours to bid. The National Stock Exchange of India's share sale was only 42% subscribed on its first day, while Hyundai Motor India's IPO received bids for just 18% of the shares on offer on its opening day.

The IPO has been seen as a major test of global appetite for new share offerings at a time when investors have sharpened their scrutiny of AI-related companies. Almost 90% of Jio Platforms' revenue comes from its telecoms business.

With backing from Meta, Alphabet's Google and institutional investors, Jio Platforms is home to India's biggest telecoms company, with more than 500 million subscribers, making it the world's second-largest telecoms operator in a single country after China Mobile.

Aishvarya Dadheech, founder of Fident Asset Management, said the rapid IPO bidding was surprising, given that large IPOs in India typically get fully subscribed later. He added that Jio had changed India's telecom landscape and offered a reasonable valuation with strong fundamentals.

Jio Platforms' telecom business, led by Ambani's son Akash, began in 2016 with a bet that Indians would use the internet far more if it cost almost nothing. It rapidly took market share from rivals such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea by offering cheap data and free voice calls.

The IPO values Jio Platforms at up to $108.3 billion, potentially making it one of India's biggest companies by market capitalisation when trading begins on October 28. Bharti Airtel's market capitalisation stood at $123.38 billion on Wednesday.

Jio Platforms this week allotted shares worth $853 million to more than 200 global and domestic investors, including the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and BlackRock, after the reserved portion drew bids totalling more than $25 billion.

Retail investors, employees and Reliance shareholders are participating in the offering, which closes on Friday and has a price range of ₹1,065 to ₹1,119 per share.

The IPO is the first from Reliance since 2006. Ambani first promised a listing within five years in 2019, but the plans were delayed in 2025. A filing for a listing as early as March was pushed back after the Iran war dampened IPO appetite.

Jio Platforms is pitching its IPO during the ongoing Hindu festive season, considered auspicious for purchases, although Indian markets have remained subdued in recent weeks.

Reliance paid its more than 400,000 employees their salaries about 15 days early this month. The company also helped facilitate share account-opening services in recent weeks for those interested in applying for the IPO, a person in the industry with direct knowledge of the situation said. Reliance did not respond to a request for comment.

Jio Platforms earned about $3.2 billion in profit on $15.5 billion in revenue in the year to March. The company plans to use up to $2.89 billion of the proceeds to repay or prepay borrowings at its telecoms unit. The rest will be used for general corporate purposes, including capital expenditure, according to its IPO prospectus.

IPO helps rupee recovery
Meanwhile, foreign inflows linked to the IPO helped the Indian rupee extend its recovery on Thursday, taking it into a technically “overbought” zone despite rising oil prices.

The rupee strengthened to 94.35 per dollar from its previous close of 94.46, even as Brent crude rose nearly 2% to $110.6 per barrel amid concerns over hostilities in the Middle East. The United States had ordered some diplomats to leave its missions in Saudi Arabia.

The currency was on course for an eight-day winning streak, having recovered from near record-low levels earlier in October. Strong foreign portfolio inflows drawn by the $3.2 billion Jio IPO have helped extend the rebound, with the public issue being fully subscribed within hours of opening for bids.

The sharp recovery pushed the rupee-dollar pair's 14-day relative strength index (RSI), a gauge of momentum, to nearly 74. A reading above 70 indicates that the pair is overbought, while a reading below 30 signals it is oversold. Momentum has shifted sharply over the past two weeks from October 9, when the RSI had fallen to about 27.

The rupee has also been supported by expectations that the Reserve Bank of India will raise interest rates further after increasing them for the first time in nearly four years earlier this month.

Minutes of the RBI's October policy meeting, released after market hours on Wednesday, indicated that policymakers considered further tightening necessary but remained wary of an aggressive cycle because of risks to economic growth.

Goldman Sachs analysts said in a note that their assessment suggested the October Monetary Policy Committee minutes were more hawkish than Governor's statement on October 7. They continued to expect a 25-basis-point repo rate hike in December 2026, followed by another 50 basis points of hikes in the first half of 2027.