India’s biggest stock exchange and its largest telecoms operator will go public before the end of the year, in twin listings that experts say could be as seminal for the country’s capital markets as the marquee software offerings of decades past.
Jio Platforms, the digital arm of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) – the world’s largest derivatives exchange and among the top three equity exchanges by trading volume – filed draft papers for their initial public offerings within days of each other last month.
“India's Jio Platforms and NSE file for IPOs, valuing the firms at up to $160bn and $57bn respectively.”
Jio is expected to raise around $4bn (£3.02bn) at an estimated valuation of $120-160bn. The NSE issue will reportedly offer 6% equity for $3.3bn, valuing the bourse at $57bn.
Beyond the unprecedented scale – which could lift India’s overall market capitalisation several notches – investors are watching because the two businesses represent the sweeping changes in how Indians have come to live, consume, invest and transact over the past decade, said Yatin Singh, CEO of Investment Banking at Emkay Global.
“These are unique businesses which don’t get built often,” Singh told the BBC. “NSE is a direct proxy of the ‘financialisation’ of Indian household savings into mutual funds and stocks, while Jio is the story of a company that single handedly ushered in a digital revolution, becoming a driving factor for several new-age Indian businesses.”
Jio’s belated entry into India’s crowded telecom market in 2016 consolidated a highly fragmented industry of 17 operators and turned it into a virtual duopoly. The Ambanis sparked a fierce pricing war by offering virtually free data to hundreds of millions of new users.
Barely 200 million Indians used the internet a decade ago. That number is now inching towards a billion, with Jio alone amassing 525 million subscribers. They use its data to make payments, watch web shows and shop online. Indians are now the largest consumers of mobile data globally, surpassing even developed markets like the US and China – driven largely by Jio’s cheap tariffs that democratised smartphone use.
The way the country spends money and time has changed dramatically as a result. India’s United Payments Interface (UPI), launched in the same year as Jio, went from processing near zero digital payments to 228 billion transactions in 2025, according to brokerage Zerodha. Paid subscribers to OTT platforms have also jumped sharply.