Reliance faces investor scrutiny over digital unit listing this week

Mukesh Ambani has been talking about taking Jio Platforms public for a while now. Investors are getting a little tired of waiting.

This week, Reliance Industries Ltd faces renewed scrutiny from shareholders eager to see concrete progress on a listing for its digital arm, Jio Platforms Ltd. The company originally targeted 2025 for the IPO, then pushed it to 2026. As of late May, Ambani was still describing the process in the vaguest possible terms, saying Reliance is evaluating “strategic pathways” for Jio.

A $100 billion question mark

Current valuations for the digital unit range from just over $100B to approximately $180B. The planned IPO could raise up to $4B, which would potentially rank as India’s largest public offering ever.

Jio attracted heavyweight backers during its 2019-2020 restructuring period, pulling in strategic investments from Meta, Google, and Silver Lake, among others. Those deals totaled tens of billions of dollars since 2020.

Why the delays keep piling up

Ambani’s original plan was to get Jio listed in 2025 or early 2026. Fluctuations in global market conditions and geopolitical factors, including US-Iran relations, created enough uncertainty to keep Reliance from pulling the trigger.

Reliance has also been working on governance enhancements as part of its preparations for the listing, tidying up Jio’s corporate structure to make it more palatable to public market investors.

What this means for investors

For Reliance shareholders specifically, a Jio listing would unlock significant value that’s currently trapped inside the parent company’s conglomerate discount. Separating Jio through a public listing would let the market price it independently, and given those $100B-plus valuations, that repricing could be substantial.

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