Jio in India Preparing for IPO in 2025
According to Reuters, India’s largest service provider, Reliance Jio Infocomm, may conduct an initial public offering (IPO) next year. The report states that the telecommunications company has approximately 479 million users and a market value exceeding $100 billion.
As early as 2019, at the 42nd annual shareholders’ meeting of Reliance Industries, its chairman Mukesh Ambani stated, “We will introduce global leading partners in these businesses in the coming quarters and list these two companies (Jio and Reliance Retail) within the next five years.”
Reuters quoted sources as saying that Jio’s IPO may be the largest IPO in India’s history, possibly surpassing Hyundai’s $3.3 billion IPO earlier this year.
Reliance Industries holds 67% of the shares in Jio Platform, the parent company of Reliance Jio, while private equity firms hold the remaining shares.And several global investors, including Meta, Qualcomm, Google, Intel, General Atlantic, KKR, and Silverlake, invested $20 billion in the Jio platform in 2020, acquiring a 33% stake in the company.
Jio
Jio has established one of the world’s largest 5G SA networks. The company reported that there were 148 million 5G users in the quarter ending October 2024. What’s more, the company recently announced that its revenue for the September 2024 quarter increased by 18%, reaching INR 3170.9 billion (USD 3.76 billion). And against the backdrop of announcing tariff increases earlier this year, Jio’s average revenue per user (ARPU) increased from INR 181.70 (USD 2.15) in the June 2024 quarter to INR 195.1 (USD 2.31) in the September 2024 quarter.
Jio recently made headlines for collaborating with artificial intelligence (AI) giant Nvidia to develop AI infrastructure in the country. The company has developed a self-developed 5G stack and is attempting to sell it in the global market. Jio launched 4G services for free in the first six months of 2016, and subsequently disrupted the Indian market by offering 4G services at much cheaper prices than other companies.