Silicon Valley, sovereign funds and Ambani sit tight on their Jio stake in potential ₹35,000 crore offer
Meta, Google, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and a group of global private equity investors will not sell their stakes in Jio Platforms Ltd’s planned initial public offering (IPO) as the company moves towards India’s largest IPO.
Reliance Industries Ltd’s digital arm on Friday filed draft documents with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for the proposed new issue of 270 million equity shares. The initial public offering (IPO) will not include an offer to sell; This means that neither Reliance Industries nor Jio’s financial investors will issue shares through listing.
Jio plans to use the most ₹27,500 crore from the IPO was raised for pre-payment of certain debts of major subsidiary Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL).
People who are directly aware of the subject being discussed Mint Jio Platforms also plans to increase ₹4,500-7,500 crore for general corporate purposes, which indicates the total IPO size ₹32,000-35,000 crore.
Earlier this month, Reliance transformed Jio Platforms’ listing structure from an offer-for-sale-oriented format to a completely new one. As a result, all of the proceeds from the share sale will accrue to the company and not to existing shareholders.
Reliance Industries remains the largest shareholder of Jio Platforms with 66.43% stake. Among outside investors, Meta Platforms Inc holds a 9.98% stake through subsidiary Jaadhu Holdings LLC, while Google International LLC holds a 7.73% stake.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund owns 2.31 percent, while private equity firms KKR and Vista Equity Partners each hold 2.31 percent through indirect funds. Silver Lake has 1.88%, Mubadala Investment Company has 1.85%, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority has 1.16% and General Atlantic has 1.34%.
The company’s 10 largest shareholders own 97.32% of the total equity capital.
Jio has appointed Kotak Mahindra Capital Co., Morgan Stanley India Co., BofA Securities India Ltd, Axis Capital Ltd, BNP Paribas, Citigroup Global Markets India Pvt. Ltd and Goldman Sachs (India) Securities are the leading book-running managers. The shares are proposed to be listed on the National Stock Exchange and BSE.
The application enters Sebi’s review process before the company moves on to the next steps towards listing.
“In a completely new issue, the discipline of utilization of proceeds becomes central as every rupee collected is expected to be legitimized for public investors,” said Soumya Singh, co-founder of law and policy firm Thistle&Law. “From a legal perspective, Sebi’s focus will be on whether the objects of the question are specific, measurable and not overly dependent on a broad set of GCPs (general bucket process).”
