Ten years after entering the telecom market with free calls and ultra-cheap data, Reliance Jio is preparing to take the scale it built through that disruption to public markets. The company’s proposed initial public offering, estimated to be around Rs 37,700-crore, cleared by Sebi last week, could become the largest IPO and mark a turning point for a business that has spent its first decade chasing subscribers and building infrastructure.
The question for Jio is no longer whether it can disrupt telecom. It has already done that. The bigger test now is whether it can monetise the network, customer base and digital ecosystem built over the past decade — and persuade public-market investors that Jio is worth more as a technology and digital platform than as a telecom operator alone.
When Jio commercially launched on September 5, 2016, it offered free voice calls and data as part of its introductory offer on an all-4G network. Its entry triggered a price war that forced incumbents to cut tariffs, accelerated network investments and hastened consolidation across an industry that had more than 10 operators competing for subscribers.
“Jio brought with it scale at a national level. Till then, many players were able to survive with a regional play. But Jio took the game national. And not everyone was cut out for that scale,” an analyst said.
The impact was visible not just in the number of operators but in the economics of data. There were fewer than 10 million 4G consumers in FY16, with monthly data consumption below 0.2 GB per capita. By FY25, 4G and 5G consumers had reached 938.3 million, while monthly data consumption had risen to 25.7 GB per capita.
Over the same period, the price of data fell from Rs 228 a GB to Rs 7.9. The resulting proliferation of cheap data helped create the conditions for the rapid expansion of digital payments, streaming, e-commerce and other app-based services.
Jio itself has grown into a vastly larger business. It had 524.4 million customers at the end of FY26, adding 36.2 million during the year, while average revenue per user stood at Rs 214 a month. Revenue from operations was Rs 1.47 lakh crore, Ebitda Rs 76,255 crore and profit after tax Rs 30,049 crore.
Unlocking Valuation
Its proposed IPO, however, is less about funding the next leg of expansion than about bringing the business to public markets and unlocking a market valuation. Jio Platforms plans to issue up to 270 million fresh shares, with the bulk of the proceeds – Rs 27,500 crore — earmarked to repay or prepay borrowings of Reliance Jio Infocomm.
That makes the listing an important marker in Jio’s evolution. Its first decade was about building scale: acquire customers, build the network, lower the cost of data and establish a dominant position. The second decade will be about extracting more value from that scale.
Jio is already moving beyond mobile connectivity. Its home broadband business had 27.1 million customers at March-end, while its enterprise portfolio spans private 5G, cybersecurity and managed services. It is also building businesses around cloud, IoT and artificial intelligence.
For investors, the distinction will matter. Jio is no longer simply selling connectivity to hundreds of millions of consumers. It is attempting to use that connectivity as the foundation for a wider digital ecosystem.
The IPO therefore comes at a natural inflection point: Jio has spent 10 years changing the economics of Indian telecom. Its next challenge is to change the economics of its own business.