Jio IPO listing to make it India’s 4th most-valued firm after RIL, Airtel, HDFC Bank

Jio Platforms Ltd is set to become India’s fourth-most-valued listed company following its Rs 30,213 crore IPO. At the upper end of the Rs 1,065-1,119 price band, the Mukesh Ambani-led company has an implied market capitalisation of Rs 10,30,490.55 crore, behind Bharti Airtel at Rs 11,63,697 crore and HDFC Bank Ltd at Rs 11,18,773 crore. Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) would retain the No. 1 spot, with a market capitalisation of Rs 16,40,076 crore.

Analysts noted that Jio has successfully transitioned from a capital-heavy telecom rollout to a high-margin digital monetisation engine. With heavy 5G network capex largely complete, capital intensity is rapidly moderating, they said.

"Jio's earnings compounding is propelled by steady ARPU trajectory, 4G-to-5G premiumisation, expanding data throughput, and enterprise cloud/AI digital services," Religare Securities said in a note.

For Reliance group's flagship Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), the Jio Platforms' listing would mean carrying a holding company discount.

The IPO would serve as the definitive structural inflection point for group re-rating, Religare Securities said.

"Historically, conglomerate stocks carry a persistent holding-company discount due to opaque segment valuations and internal capital allocation ambiguity. Listing Jio establishes an independent, quoted market price for RIL’s largest growth asset, providing unquestionable transparency to RIL’s Sum-of-the-Parts (SOTP) structure and directly triggering a structural compression in the conglomerate discount," Religare said.

On Thursday, shares of Reliance Industries were trading 3.02 per cent higher at Rs 1211.45 apiece. Bharti Airtel also jumped 3.65 per cent to Rs 1,864.75 apiece. HDFC Bank added 2.03 per cent to Rs 725.15.

Telecom stocks gained, as bets on tariff hikes increased.

Nomura said Jio has slightly delayed its tariff hike against its earlier expectation of mid-2026, so that it goes into the IPO as the clear leader on both subscribers and revenue market share.

"Airtel has been able to close the revenue market share in the past two tariff hikes, and Jio would want the narrative in its favour before its listing. Our base case remains a tariff hike sometime in 3QFY27F. Jio’s Rs 300 per month Prime membership pays off for subscribers only if there is a tariff hike before March, which we think is the worst case in terms of the timing of a broad-based industry tariff hike," Nomura said.

India has a four-player mobile market, and the top three players have a mobile broadband market share of over 97 epr cent as of June 30, 2026. Jio is the market leader, holding a 49.78 per cent market share in wireless broadband as of June 30, 2026, followed by Bharti Airtel42 at 35.47 per cent, Vodafone Idea at 12.51 epr cent, and BSNL at 2.20 per cent.

Jio serves 1.4 times as many 4G and 5G customers as the second-largest player as of June 30, 2026.