India's Reliance Industries mulls IPO of Facebook-backed Jio Platforms

The company is being prepared for an initial public offering outside India after attracting billions of dollars in investment

Jio Platforms combines Reliance’s digital assets with its wireless carrier, Reliance Jio Infocomm, into a holding company. Reuters

Reliance Industries is working with banks on early preparations for an overseas listing of its digital and wireless business, sources told Bloomberg, after the unit attracted more than $10 billion (Dh36.7bn) of investment in a month.

The conglomerate backed by Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man, is preparing Jio Platforms for an initial public offering outside of India, the sources said. The offering could happen in the next 12 to 24 months and the company hasn’t decided on a listing venue. There’s also no final decision on timeline and size.

US-based private equity firm KKR last week became the latest investor piling into Jio Platforms after Mr Ambani sealed deals with Facebook, Silver Lake Partners and General Atlantic recently. An overseas listing could potentially give the digital business a higher valuation and allow existing investors to exit, the people said.

A representative for Reliance Industries declined to comment.

Jio Platforms combines Reliance’s digital assets with its wireless carrier, Reliance Jio Infocomm, into a holding company aimed at becoming a top e-commerce and payments operator in India’s vast consumer market.

Investors are betting on Jio’s access to India’s huge consumer market, and its potential to shake up traditional industries – from retail to education and payments – in the country through its technology. As retail rules have changed in recent years allowing more foreign competition, India's ecommerce market has become a major battleground for technology and retail giants including Amazon.com, Walmart and Google’s parent Alphabet.

Reliance Jio was started in 2016 but is already India’s largest wireless carrier. The operator stormed past rivals by building a nationwide 4G network, then offering free calling and data services at prices that established competitors with older networks could not match without losing money. Mr Ambani was weighing up an IPO of Reliance Jio three years ago after a $31bn investment spree, Bloomberg News reported in 2017.

Shares of Reliance Industries have fallen about 5 per cent this year, giving the conglomerate a market value of about $120bn.