Jio Platforms opens 21% above its IPO price and becomes India's second most valuable company

If your phone runs on Jio, you now use a service from a company anyone can own a piece of. On Wednesday morning, 28 October, Jio Platforms began trading on India’s two stock exchanges, the NSE and the BSE. Its shares opened at ₹1,358, according to the exchanges’ data as reported by IANS, Upstox and Groww.

The Jio Platforms listing price was 21.36% above the ₹1,119 that IPO buyers paid. At that price the company was worth about ₹12.5 lakh crore (roughly US$131 billion; one lakh crore is one trillion rupees). That makes it India’s second most valuable listed company, behind only its parent, Reliance Industries. It is the biggest test yet of how investors value India’s digital life.

Jio Platforms listing price: ₹1,358 after a ₹30,213 crore IPO

• The IPO: ₹30,213 crore (about US$3.2 billion), India’s biggest ever. Every share was new; Reliance sold none, according to the draft prospectus filed with SEBI, India’s market regulator. Most of the money is meant to pay down the borrowings of Reliance Jio Infocomm, the mobile company inside the group.
• The demand: buyers bid for 22.19 times the shares on offer between 21 and 23 October. Big institutions bid 70.55 times their share; ordinary (retail) investors 2.72 times.
• The debut: trading began at 10:00 India time (04:30 UTC). After a flat start, the Jio Platforms share price rose to ₹1,413.80 at about 15:00 India time (09:30 UTC), Upstox reported, about 4% above the opening price. The closing price was not confirmed when we published.
• The scale: the company served 524.4 million customers at the end of March 2026, its prospectus says. Meta and Google bought minority stakes in 2020.

For a retail investor who got shares, the Jio IPO listing gain was ₹2,868 on one lot of 12 shares: the lot cost ₹13,428 and was worth ₹16,296 at the opening price.

Akash Ambani, chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm, said the response had “surpassed our imagination”. He told staff the listing was a new start, not the end goal.

Broker targets that sit at the opening price

Three brokers began covering the stock on listing day, all with a Buy rating, Goodreturns and IANS reported. Their Jio Platforms share price targets are close to where it opened: Nomura ₹1,340, Motilal Oswal ₹1,350 and Elara ₹1,367. In plain words, the experts see a fair price, not a bargain.

There is a second reason for care. Motilal Oswal noted that less than 3% of the company trades freely; Reliance and its partners hold most of the rest. With so few shares available, small trades can move the price a lot, in either direction.

If you pay a Jio bill or hold Jio shares

For Jio’s customers, the most important line came from Nomura. Jio has 42% of India’s mobile subscribers and 60% of its data traffic, the broker says, and it expects the listing to push Jio towards “steady tariff hikes” that rivals can follow. That is an analyst’s view, not a company plan. Still, a listed company answers to shareholders every quarter, and plan prices are its biggest lever.

If you got shares, the first-day gain is real but not a promise. New listings often swing in their first weeks. This is not investment advice.

For readers outside India, the Jio Platforms market cap tells a simple story. A mobile network now ranks above every listed Indian company except its own parent. Big listings do not always reach this point: SK hynix recently halted its plan to list its SSD maker Solidigm after regulators in Korea raised concerns.

Why a strong debut is only the first test

There is a lot to respect here. Nomura’s note calls Jio “once the disruptor, now the leader”, and the numbers back that up: more than 500 million customers and the biggest share of India’s data traffic. Motilal Oswal expects it to hold more cash than debt by March 2029. And demand for the IPO, led by big institutions, was strong.

The risks are just as clear. Analyst targets suggest most of the near-term good news may already be in the price. A small free float makes the shares jumpy. And the clearest path to higher profit, raising prices, lands on customers’ monthly bills. In our analysis, that tension, between shareholders who want growth and users who want affordable plans, will shape how Jio is judged.

On balance, this is a meaningful moment for India’s digital economy, but a careful start for investors: the listing proves demand, not long-term value.

The next things to watch are Jio’s first quarterly results as a listed company and any change to mobile plan prices. Those will show whether owners and customers can both come out ahead.