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 clutch of global private equity investors will not sell shares in Jio Platforms Ltd's planned initial public offering (IPO), as the company moves ahead with what could become India's largest listing.

The digital arm of Reliance Industries Ltd on Friday filed draft papers with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for a proposed fresh issue of 270 million equity shares. The intial public offering (IPO) will not include an offer for sale, meaning neither Reliance Industries nor Jio's financial investors will offload stock through the listing.

Jio plans to use up to ₹27,500 crore from the IPO proceeds to prepay certain borrowings of material subsidiary Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL).

People directly aware of the matter told Mint that Jio Platforms also plans to raise ₹4,500-7,500 crore for general corporate purposes, implying a total IPO size of ₹32,000-35,000 crore.

Reliance earlier this month reworked Jio Platforms' listing structure from an offer-for-sale-led format to a fully fresh issue. As a result, all proceeds from the share sale will accrue to the company rather than existing shareholders.

Reliance Industries remains Jio Platforms' largest shareholder with a 66.43% stake. Among outside investors, Meta Platforms Inc holds 9.98% through affiliate Jaadhu Holdings LLC, while Google International LLC owns 7.73%.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund holds 2.31%, while private equity firms KKR and Vista Equity Partners own 2.31% each through indirect funds. Silver Lake owns 1.88%, Mubadala Investment Company 1.85%, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority 1.16% and General Atlantic 1.34%.

Together, the company's 10 largest shareholders own 97.32% of its equity.

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, among others, as book-running lead managers. The shares are proposed to be listed on the National Stock Exchange and BSE.

The filing now enters Sebi's review process before the company can proceed with the next steps toward listing.

“In a pure fresh issue, the use-of-proceeds discipline becomes central because every rupee raised is expected to be justified to public investors,” said Soumya Singh, co-founding partner at law and policy firm Thistle&Law. “From a legal perspective, Sebi’s focus will be on whether the objects of the issue are specific, measurable and not excessively dependent on a broad GCP (general bucket process) bucket.”