'Very, Very Big': HDFC AMC's Navneet Munot Says Jio IPO Shows the Depth of India's Capital Markets
MUMBAI: The upcoming Jio Platforms initial public offering — the largest in India's history — highlights the depth and potential of the country's capital markets, according to Navneet Munot, the managing director and chief executive of HDFC Asset Management Company.
In an interaction with CNBC-TV18 on Monday, Munot, who manages assets worth over $660 million, said such mega issues reflect how far India's markets have come, even as foreign investors continue to remain net sellers and global uncertainties keep sentiment in check.
"I hope that more and more entrepreneurs look at the long-term potential of India, innovate, and invest more because the markets are giving them an opportunity to raise capital," Munot said.
The Jio Platforms IPO, which opens for subscription on Wednesday, October 21, aims to raise ₹30,213 crore — a sum that would make it the biggest public issue in India's capital markets history, surpassing Hyundai Motor India's ₹27,859 crore IPO of 2024 and LIC's ₹20,557 crore issue of 2022. The issue is a complete fresh issue with no offer-for-sale component, meaning all the money raised will go to the company rather than to existing shareholders cashing out.
Jio has set a price band of ₹1,065 to ₹1,119 per share and plans to issue up to 27 crore new shares. At the upper end of the band, the Mukesh Ambani-led company carries an implied market capitalisation of about ₹10.3 lakh crore — a valuation that would make Jio Platforms India's fourth-most-valued listed company on debut, behind Reliance Industries at around ₹16.4 lakh crore, Bharti Airtel at about ₹11.6 lakh crore and HDFC Bank at roughly ₹11.2 lakh crore.
On valuation, the issue appears to have left some room for investors. At the top of the price band, Jio Platforms is priced at roughly 34 times its FY26 earnings of ₹30,049 crore — a little below rival Bharti Airtel's multiple of around 36.8 times.
Brokerage estimates put the range a touch wider: Emkay has pegged the valuation at 31.7 to 33.3 times FY26 earnings and 15 to 15.6 times FY26 EBITDA, while SBI Securities has estimated a post-issue price-to-earnings multiple of 34.4 times, valuing the company at an enterprise value of ₹20,117 per subscriber.
Institutional appetite ahead of the issue has been extraordinary. Anchor bidding, which opened on October 19, drew demand of nearly ₹2.5 lakh crore — one of the largest anchor books ever seen for an Indian issue. Foreign long-only funds, sovereign wealth funds and pension funds accounted for a substantial portion of the demand, with BlackRock, GIC, LIC, HDFC Life, SBI Life and SBI Pension among the participants.
Such a strong anchor response is expected to support the main book and provides an early read on institutional appetite for the country's biggest-ever offering.
The finer details of the issue show how the company has tried to bring in different investor pools. Investors can bid in lots of 12 shares, with ₹500 crore worth of shares reserved for eligible employees — who will also get a discount of ₹54 per share — and ₹2,500 crore reserved for eligible shareholders of parent Reliance Industries. The issue papers were filed with the Registrar of Companies in Ahmedabad ahead of the board committee's approval of the price band.
The company plans to use a substantial portion of the proceeds to prepay borrowings of its telecom subsidiary, Reliance Jio Infocomm — around ₹27,500 crore is earmarked for debt repayment — with the remaining amount set aside for general corporate purposes.
A consortium of 19 bankers — including Kotak Mahindra Capital, Morgan Stanley India, BofA Securities India, Axis Capital, Goldman Sachs India, HSBC and HDFC Bank — is managing the issue. The anchor bidding window opened on October 19, the public issue runs from October 21 to October 23, allotment is expected on October 26, and the shares are scheduled to list on October 28.
The scale of the business being listed explains the excitement. Jio reported 533.3 million subscribers as of June 2026, with nearly 285 million of them on its 5G network — one of the fastest 5G rollouts anywhere in the world. Average revenue per user, the industry's most-watched metric, has climbed from ₹181.7 in FY24 to ₹215.6 in the quarter ended June 2026, even as each customer consumed an average of 43.7 GB of data a month.
The June quarter brought a net profit of ₹7,764 crore, and the cash flow profile has turned a corner: EBITDA less cash capex rose sharply to ₹42,071 crore in FY26 as the heavy nationwide 5G rollout cycle moderated.
Analysts say the issue could be a structural inflection point for the group. Religare Securities, in a note, observed that listing Jio establishes an independent, quoted market price for Reliance Industries' largest growth asset, adding transparency to the conglomerate's sum-of-the-parts structure.
The firm also noted that Jio has transitioned from a capital-heavy telecom rollout to a high-margin digital monetisation engine, with its heavy 5G network spending largely behind it.
The listing will also mark the first IPO by the Reliance Industries group in nearly two decades — the group last tapped the public markets with the listing of Reliance Petroleum in 2006.
What excites brokerage houses about Jio is not just its size but where its next revenue lift could come from. India has 261 million users still on 2G networks — a massive upgrade pool — while industry projections see mobile broadband ARPU rising from ₹199.5 in FY26 to ₹326.4 by FY31. Jio's fixed broadband base, including 14 million JioAirFiber connections, and a portfolio of 7,220 patent applications speak to the digital ecosystem bet that sits on top of the telecom core.
Together, Jio and Airtel control more than 77% of India's wireless market, making premiumisation and tariff revisions the key profit levers for Dalal Street to track.
Beyond the IPO itself, Munot used the occasion to press a point he has made before: the need for a friendlier taxation structure to draw back foreign capital. "You ask me about would government be open on the taxation. This is a pain point for the foreign investors, and I am sure the government would be engaging deeply with them," he said.
He noted that foreign investors hold less than 1% of global capital in India, and argued that all they want from the tax regime is "simplicity, transparency and predictability". Last week, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said she would be open to hearing views on long-term capital gains tax and the securities transaction tax — remarks that triggered a sharp rally in Indian equity markets.
Munot said recent interactions had given foreign portfolio investors hope that a tax structure review is on the cards.
The Jio IPO arrives at a moment of relative buoyancy for Indian primary markets, with a strong pipeline of listings through the year. Market watchers will be watching subscription numbers closely — the grey market premium climbed to around ₹251 a share on October 19, implying a listing gain of roughly 22%, a steep rise from about ₹125 in early October — for a read on risk appetite at the top end of the market.
Grey market premiums are unofficial and unregulated, but the direction of travel has been unmistakable.
For India's capital markets, the issue is more than a fundraise. As Munot put it, an IPO of this scale being absorbed comfortably would itself be a signal: the market's capacity to take down a ₹30,000-crore-plus issue without strain says something about how deep the investor base has become.
(Reporting based on CNBC-TV18 and Business Today.)