Jio Platforms 32亿美元印度史上最大IPO开放认购不到两小时获足额认购，10月28日挂牌

MUMBAI -- In September 2016, shareholders of the petrochemical giant Reliance Industries saw Chairman Mukesh Ambani take the podium at its annual general meeting behind a curious new red emblem.
Over an hour, Ambani laid out the group's biggest shift since it was split up after the death of its founder, his father Dhirubhai Ambani, in 2002. Reliance would use its vast oil refining fortunes to disrupt the country's telecom sector, which had about a dozen or so players at the time, by offering free phone calls and drastically cheaper internet, while quickly building out infrastructure for its 4G network.
"When it comes to India, I'm an eternal optimist," said Ambani, who was then on the cusp of turning 60. "I have no doubt that Jio-enabled Indians will create a whole new digital economy."
On Wednesday, investors rushed to buy into this optimism, as Ambani's telecom venture Jio Platforms saw its 302.1 billion rupees ($3.2 billion) initial public offering -- India's largest ever -- became fully subscribed less than two hours after it opened to bidding. The oversubscription was led by institutional investors, whose bids were well over three times the amount of shares allotted to them.
However, retail investor sentiment held its expected pace on the first day, with bids worth roughly a quarter of the shares reserved for them. The company had pruned its valuation down to about 10.3 trillion rupees for the IPO, from expectations of well over 12 trillion rupees reported earlier this year, amid weakness in the market.
The company is expected to make its market debut on Oct. 28.
Over the past decade, Jio has garnered more than half a billion subscribers and become an effective duopoly with rival Bharti Airtel, after sharply undercutting competitors, which led most to shut down or put themselves up for sale.
About 280 million of these subscribers are already on 5G, the company says, adding that it carries about two-thirds of the country's total wireless data traffic, with customers consuming over 40 gigabytes of data per month each.
These achievements have helped attract big-name investors who have put billions of dollars into the privately held company, including Meta, Google and the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund. None are selling in the IPO, which only constitutes a fresh issue of shares, with most of the funds raised being used to pay down net debt of up to 275 billion rupees. The company is also encouraging its massive workforce of about 420,000 employees to buy into the IPO, Bloomberg reported last week, by releasing salaries early and reserving shares under a quota for Jio's about 75,000 employees.
But as it goes public, the company is also entering uncharted territory, as the nature of the telecom business changes and Jio tries to remake itself as a tech company. Its success has made it the bedrock of a number of other bets on the online economy by the Reliance group, including in streaming, ecommerce and, increasingly, artificial intelligence.
The new businesses, which constitute a growing share in the conglomerate's overall earnings, are expected to fundamentally reshape it as geopolitical pressures -- from sanctions on Russia to conflict in the Middle East -- inject volatility into the legacy petrochemical business. The timing is also crucial as Ambani, who is now the same age his father was at his death, plans for succession by his three children, Akash, Isha and Anant, who work with the telecom, consumer and petrochemical businesses, respectively.
Akash Ambani, the managing director of Jio Platforms, faces the twin challenge of navigating a mature telecom business while also leading the charge on technological bets.
"With the period of easy subscriber gains likely ending, tariff hikes might become the primary driver of earnings growth," analysts at Nomura said earlier this month in a note about Jio's IPO.
"Bharti Airtel remains our top pick in the sector, due to its higher proportion of premium subscribers, which should insulate it from downtrading and subscriber attrition," the note added. Though it has a smaller userbase, Airtel rakes in higher revenue per user than Jio.
Besides monetizing the core telecom customer base, Jio will look to build telecom hardware in house, especially for 6G, said Siddhant Cally, senior research analyst at tech research company Counterpoint.
"There are few mobile network operators that are putting in this much work into hardware R&D ... and they benefit from the convergence of understanding how low-cost technology works and the capital [to develop and deploy it]," Cally said.
Beyond telecoms, Akash Ambani laid out the group's ambitions in network hardware and AI earlier this year. These include plans to develop a low Earth orbit satellite constellation, similar to Elon Musk's Starlink, which likely prompted an outburst from Musk on X earlier this month where he sarcastically called the Ambani patriarch "Prime Minister" and accused him of blocking Starlink's entry into India.
The Reliance group is also looking to commission 120 megawatts of AI data center capacity by the end of this year through a joint venture with Meta, while promising to integrate AI into a plethora of services it provides.
The group itself does not have a headline AI model or hardware, and will be relying on such partnerships to benefit from the global AI investment cycle.
"If you are partnering up with a hyperscaler, there are obviously some risks associated with being very capital intensive," Cally said. "You have to have one eye on the amount you are spending and one eye on the amount you are generating. But that is just a dynamic of the market right now."
Though questions around the adoption and cost of AI still remain, Cally said that Jio's scale and distribution prowess makes it well placed to lead the experiment.
"When you talk about the adoption of digital technologies, you need a brand that resonates with the customer, services that are tailored to them and prices that are sensitive to them. ... Jio has done this [with telecom technology] for 10 years," he said.