From Dhirubhai Ambani’s Rs 10 crore IPO to Akash Ambani’s Rs 12.5 lakh crore Jio debut: Reliance’s biggest

The issue was oversubscribed seven times and is widely associated with the emergence of an equity investing culture in India. Reliance listed its shares on the BSE on Jan. 23, 1978.At the IPO, Reliance’s market capitalisation stood at Rs 10 crore. By June 1988, it had risen to Rs 3,026 crore, representing a compound annual growth rate of 68.1% over 11 years. Its market capitalisation reached Rs 14,395 crore in March 1997, translating into a 43.9% CAGR over 20 years.Live EventsReliance crossed the Rs 10,000-crore market-capitalisation milestone for the first time in fiscal 1993-94, closing March 1994 at Rs 10,718 crore.At the time of the original IPO, Reliance offered shares with a face value of Rs 10 apiece.

An investment of Rs 1,000 would have bought 100 shares. Following six bonus issues, those shares would have increased to 4,096 without any additional investment.The company that began as Mynylon Ltd. in 1973 later became Reliance Textile Industries Ltd. and then Reliance Industries Ltd. in June 1985. Its early operations were focused on textiles and polyester, but the group subsequently expanded into hydrocarbon exploration and production, petroleum refining and marketing, petrochemicals, advanced materials and composites, renewables, retail, digital services and media and entertainment.Jio Platforms represents the next major chapter in that expansion.The IPO raised around Rs 30,200 crore and attracted more than Rs 7 lakh crore in demand.

It was fully subscribed within 100 minutes of opening, while the Rs 5,500 crore qualified institutional buyer portion was subscribed within the first 10 minutes.By the close of the third day, the issue had been subscribed 22.2 times and the QIB portion 70.55 times. It received more than 1.38 crore applications, including those from retail and first-time investors.The IPO comprised 27 crore fresh shares, with no offer-for-sale component.

Jio Platforms plans to use Rs 27,500 crore of the proceeds to repay or prepay borrowings, with the balance earmarked for general corporate purposes.Isha Ambani, director of Jio Platforms, framed the listing as a continuation of Dhirubhai’s belief that ordinary Indians should participate in the country’s growth.“My grandfather had decided to take Reliance to the people. Not to a few wealthy investors.

To the people,” she said at the listing ceremony.“Almost 50 years later, that trust has come full circle.”Isha said Dhirubhai had placed his dream in the hands of the people, while investors had now placed “a part of your future” in the hands of the next generation of the Ambani family.“We accept that faith with gratitude, humility, and a deep sense of duty,” she said.Jio’s growth story began with affordable mobile data and a rapid expansion of digital connectivity after its launch in 2016.

The company’s material subsidiary, Reliance Jio Infocomm, now serves more than 533 million customers, according to analyst reports prepared around the listing.Jio has since expanded beyond wireless connectivity into fixed broadband, AirFiber, cloud, enterprise communications, connected devices, entertainment, artificial intelligence and other digital services.The company’s next challenge is to convert its scale into higher-value monetisation.

Nomura, Motilal Oswal Financial Services and Elara Securities initiated coverage on the first day of trading with Buy ratings and target prices ranging from Rs 1,340 to Rs 1,367.The brokerages identified tariff increases, subscriber additions, home broadband growth, 5G monetisation, lower capital expenditure intensity and digital services expansion as the key earnings drivers.Elara expects digital services revenue to grow at a compound annual rate of about 23% between FY26 and FY29, with EBITDA growth of about 36%.

It expects Jio’s home broadband subscriber base to rise from 27 million in FY26 to 66 million by FY29.Motilal Oswal expects a tariff increase of about 15% from March 2027 and projects Jio Platforms’ consolidated revenue, EBITDA and profit to grow at compound annual rates of 14%, 15% and 20%, respectively, between FY26 and FY29.Nomura expects Jio’s EBITDA to grow at about 13.5% annually over the same period and sees the company becoming net cash by FY29.Isha said Jio had generated about $15.5 billion in revenue and about $8 billion in “real earnings” during the year.

“Very few companies anywhere in the world have done this, that too in only 10 years,” she said.She added that Jio was built on Mukesh Ambani’s first principles: “create real value for the customer, and strong earnings will follow.”“That is our dharma,” she said.Akash Ambani, who followed Isha at the listing ceremony, said Jio had been built to “render seva to the nation” and described the IPO as a new beginning.“Never let today’s achievement limit tomorrow’s ambition,” he said.Akash also outlined Jio’s next mission: to democratise technologies including artificial intelligence, cloud computing, connected devices and connectivity from space.“In our first 10 years, we democratised data,” he said.

“In our next step, we want to democratise every technology that can transform lives.”Dhirubhai’s original IPO built a public shareholder base around a textile company. Akash’s Jio listing has placed a technology and digital services platform at the centre of India’s market capitalisation hierarchy. For the Ambani family, the journey from Rs 10 crore to Rs 12.5 lakh crore is both a history of the past five decades and a bet on the next one.(Disclaimer: This article has been written by Nikhil Agarwal, who is not a SEBI-registered Research Analyst or an Investment Adviser.

Nikhil Agarwal and his/her ‘relative(s)’ (as defined under Section 2(77) of the Companies Act, 2013) do not hold any financial interest in the companies mentioned in this article as of the date of publication. The views/recommendations mentioned in this article, wherever applicable, are those of the respective SEBI-registered Research Analyst/brokerage and have been reproduced/reported with due attribution.

They should not be construed as the views or recommendations of The Economic Times Digital or the journalist. Readers are advised to consider the original research report and make their investment decisions based on their own assessment. Brokerage disclaimers here )(You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel)