Jio Platforms IPO Anchor Book Draws About $26 Billion of Bids, More Than 30 Times Its Size

Jio Platforms, the telecom and digital arm of Reliance Industries, raised ₹8,110 crore, about $854 million, from 212 anchor investors on Monday, October 19, 2026, two days before its initial public offering opens to the public. Bids for those anchor shares came to more than ₹2.5 lakh crore, about $26.3 billion, or more than 30 times the shares on offer, according to people familiar with the book cited by CNBC and Business Standard. The first report of the demand reached the MoveSurge news feed at 07:10:01 ET.

Anchor investors are large institutions that commit to an Indian IPO before the public offer opens, at the price the company sets. Their bids are the first hard evidence of demand, and in Jio's case they priced at ₹1,119, the top of the range. A crore is 10 million rupees, and a lakh crore is one trillion rupees.

Largest Indian IPO in rupees, second in dollars

At ₹30,213 crore, Jio's issue is larger in rupees than Hyundai Motor India's ₹27,870 crore offering of October 2024, the previous record. In dollars it comes out slightly smaller, about $3.2 billion against about $3.3 billion for Hyundai, according to CNBC. The two rankings differ because the rupee buys fewer dollars now than it did in October 2024, so a bigger rupee amount converts to a smaller dollar one.

A fund-raise, not a sale by Reliance

The IPO sells only newly issued shares, so Reliance, which owned 66.43% of Jio before the offer, and Jio's other large shareholders, including Meta and Google, are not selling any stock. The money goes to the company. In its draft prospectus in June, Jio said up to ₹27,500 crore of the proceeds would go to repaying borrowings at its telecom subsidiary, Reliance Jio Infocomm. The issue was cut from about ₹37,700 crore approved earlier by the market regulator to the ₹30,213 crore now on offer.

Who took the anchor shares

Life Insurance Corporation of India received the largest allocation, ₹499.98 crore, followed by New World Fund with ₹486.27 crore and the Government of Singapore's GIC with ₹340.93 crore. The 212 anchors included 85 global funds, among them BlackRock, Fidelity, Capital Group, Allianz, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the Qatar Investment Authority and Norway's Norges Bank, as well as 25 Indian mutual fund houses such as SBI, HDFC and ICICI Prudential.

The business behind the valuation

In the April to June quarter of 2026, Jio had 533.3 million subscribers, average revenue per user of ₹215.6 a month, up 3.3% from a year earlier, and revenue of ₹39,173 crore, up 11.8%. Its EBITDA, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, rose 15.1% to ₹20,865 crore. The top of the price band values the company at up to ₹10.3 lakh crore.