Businesses and investors of Ambani's Jio, which has launched its IPO

MUMBAI, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Jio Platforms JIOP.NS is raising up to $3.2 billion in India's largest-ever IPO, valuing the mainly telecoms group at as much as $108.3 billion.

The IPO was fully subscribed in less than two hours of public bidding on Wednesday, in what is a test of investor appetite for the first public offering from the Reliance RELI.NS group since Reliance Petroleum in 2006.

Here are facts and numbers on Jio Platforms, which counts Meta META.O and Google among its major foreign investors:

TELECOMS BUSINESS

Reliance Jio Platforms is a unit of Ambani's oil-to-retail conglomerate Reliance Industries RELI.NS. It is best known for the telecom business Reliance Jio Infocomm, which is the country's biggest player with more than 500 million subscribers.

Launched in 2016, the telecom business, popularly referred to simply as Jio, hit rivals such as Bharti Airtel BRTI.NS and Vodafone Idea VODA.NS hard by offering free voice and data plans initially.

The move, in line with Ambani's typical strategy of offering ultra-low prices to lure consumers, drove up its customer base and allowed many Indians to access platforms such as YouTube and Facebook for the first time.

Jio says it currently has a roughly 60% share of India's data traffic.

In recent years, Jio Platforms has diversified beyond the telecom sector into AI, cloud and enterprise network services, as well as app development. In 2023, Nvidia NVDA.O announced an AI partnership with Reliance to develop cloud infrastructure and language models.

THE LEADERSHIP

Mukesh Ambani, one of Asia's richest men, is the chairman of Jio Platforms. His three children — Akash, Anant and Isha — serve on its board. Akash Ambani, his elder son, is the chairman of the company's flagship telecom unit, Reliance Jio Infocomm.

Reliance Industries holds a 66.43% stake in Jio Platforms.

Pankaj Pawar is the CEO of Jio Platforms.

KEY FINANCIALS, VALUATION

Reliance Jio Platforms' revenue from operations rose 14.6% to 1.47 trillion Indian rupees ($15.45 billion) in the fiscal year ended March, while profit increased 15.1% to 300.49 billion Indian rupees. Around 90% of those figures were attributable to its telecoms business alone.

MARQUEE INVESTORS

In 2020, Jio Platforms raised more than $20.5 billion from 13 global investors in exchange for a roughly 33% equity stake, at a valuation range of $57 billion to $65 billion.

Global names such as Meta Platforms META.O, Alphabet GOOGL.O and KKR KKR.N invested in the firm, as Ambani sought to turn Jio Platforms into the centerpiece of his technology ambitions.

Other investors include General Atlantic, Silver Lake and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Meta owns a 9.9% stake in the company, followed by Google's 7.7% stake.

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THE IPO JOURNEY

The filing, which had been targeted for as early as March, had been pushed back as IPO activity slowed following the outbreak of the Iran war, with investors losing their appetite for new listings. The company's shares will start trading on October 28.

The IPO, previously expected to be a pure offer-for-sale where foreign investors would have sold some of their holdings, will now only be a fresh fundraising.

It has been a long road to the IPO. In 2019, Ambani said Jio would "move towards" a listing within five years, and later the plans were delayed again in 2025.

The company has hired 19 banks to manage its offering.