Jio Platforms IPO allotment on 26 October, listing on 28 October: dates, status check and grey market view

The shares were reserved by category: 50 per cent for qualified institutional buyers, excluding the anchor portion, 15 per cent for non-institutional investors and 35 per cent for retail investors. A retail applicant had to bid for at least one lot of 12 shares, or Rs 13,428 at the top of the band, and could bid for up to 14 lots, or 168 shares, which is Rs 1,87,992. The registrar to the issue is KFin Technologies. At Rs 30,213 crore, it is bigger than Hyundai Motor India's Rs 27,870 crore offer of October 2024, which was the largest IPO in India at the time. Twenty merchant bankers, including Kotak Mahindra Capital, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, managed the issue.

In the financial year 2025-26, Jio Platforms reported revenue of Rs 1,49,759 crore, up from Rs 1,29,333 crore a year earlier, and a profit of Rs 30,053 crore against Rs 26,120 crore. Its earnings per share were Rs 33.63 and its net asset value was Rs 373.66 a share. That is revenue growth of about 16 per cent and profit growth of about 15 per cent. Reliance Industries, the promoter, held 66.43 per cent before the issue and will hold 64.48 per cent after it, since the shares being sold are new.

Applicants can check the status once the basis of allotment is finalised on Monday, on the registrar's website using the application number, PAN or demat account details, and on the BSE and NSE allotment pages. A successful bidder will see the shares credited to the demat account on 27 October, and an unsuccessful one will get the money released back to the bank account or the UPI mandate unblocked.

The anchor investors' shares are locked in for a period, and under the market regulator's rules, half of the anchor allotment is held for 30 days and the rest for 90 days, so the supply of shares in the first weeks of trading is smaller than the total issue. With demand of more than 22 times the shares on offer, most retail applicants should expect to get either one lot or nothing, because allotment among retail bidders is made by lot when an issue is heavily oversubscribed. That is the usual outcome in IPOs of this size, and it does not reflect a problem with the application.

What the grey market says

On Saturday the unofficial grey market premium was around Rs 243 to Rs 246 a share, or about 22 per cent above the top of the price band. That would suggest an indicative listing price of about Rs 1,362 to Rs 1,365. The premium is not published by the exchanges, and it moves every day, so it is a rough indicator of sentiment and not a forecast.

There is a second caution. The listing day for a large issue can be volatile in either direction, and a premium in the grey market has sometimes fallen away before the shares began trading. Investors who did not apply and are thinking of buying on the first day should wait to see the opening price and the volumes.

Listing on 28 October is the first test. The opening price relative to Rs 1,119 will show how much of the demand was for the shares and how much for the allotment. The next point is how the stock trades after the first hour, when the early buyers have had time to book profits. For long-term holders, the focus will move to the company's quarterly results and to how Reliance reports Jio as a separately listed business.