ഈ ആഴ്ചയിലെ വിശേഷങ്ങൾ: ജിയോയുടെ ചരിത്രപരമായ ഓഹരി വിപണി പ്രവേശനവും അംബാനി കുടുംബത്തിന്റെ നേട്ടങ്ങളും

From RBI's rate hike and retail inflation to Trump's H-1B visa fee, FPI sell-off, Sebi's investor protection fund and changes to India's staffing model.

Some weeks, the market hands you a plot twist. This week, it handed you a family portrait.

On Wednesday morning, four generations of the Ambani family stood on stage at the National Stock Exchange as Jio Platforms Ltd stepped into public markets. Akash and Isha rang the bell at 10am. Mukesh Ambani, by all accounts, was moved to tears as his son Anant took the mic.

Anant put it the way only an Ambani could. For him, business is puja (worship), he said, and every puja ends with prasad. Today, Jio is shared with India. Isha spoke of a father who has found the courage, again and again, to build what others called impossible. Akash looked ahead: having democratized data in its first 10 years, Jio now wants to do the same for AI, cloud, connected devices and even connectivity from space.

Lovely speeches. But markets don't clap. They vote with money, and on Wednesday they voted loudly.

The jinx that wasn't

Jio opened at ₹1,358, already 21% above its issue price. Then it kept climbing, closing at about ₹1,417, up nearly 27%, on a day the Nifty slipped. By evening, Jio was worth around ₹13 trillion, making it India's second-most valuable company, behind only parent Reliance Industries Ltd.

There was a juicy sub-plot, too. Listed Reliance companies together crossed ₹30 trillion, while listed Tata companies stood at ₹25.3 trillion. Reliance is now India's most valuable listed conglomerate, a crown the Tata Group had held until now.

Why does that matter beyond bragging rights? Because India's mega-IPOs have a habit of disappointing on day one. Mint's analysis found that none of the five biggest issues before Jio gained more than 2% on debut, and three ended below their offer price. Jio walked straight past that jinx. History also warns that a strong start isn't a finish. Reliance Power Ltd opened 21.7% above its offer price and still closed at a 17.2% discount. Coal India Ltd went the other way, widening its gains.

The first report card

Two days after the bell, Jio reported its September quarter earnings on Friday, after market hours. It was its first report card as a listed company, and it delivered steady growth, backed by continued subscriber additions, growing traction in home broadband and sustained momentum in digital services.

Net profit came in at ₹8,389 crore, up 13.7% from the same quarter last year and 8% from the previous quarter. Revenue from operations rose to ₹40,475 crore, up 11.4% year-on-year and 3.3% sequentially. Jio credited subscriber additions, organic per-user growth and expansion in digital services.

For context, the June quarter had seen revenue of ₹39,173 crore, up 2.4% sequentially and 12% on-year. Net profit was ₹7,764 crore, up 9.2% on-year, though it had slipped 2.15% from the quarter before. The stock ended Friday 1.1% higher at ₹1,437.50, ahead of the results.

Without a tariff hike, Jio's per-user growth from one quarter to the next has stayed largely flat for the past few quarters, and promotional 5G offers continue to hold it back. The ₹300 Jio Prime membership, introduced in August, protects users from tariff hikes until 5 September 2027, and analysts expect it to have given some extra revenue support during the quarter.

Nobody wants to sell

Now back to the trading floor, because the debut had a few more surprises. Here's the oddly beautiful bit. Of every 100 Jio shares traded on day one, 71 were actually delivered, a sign that people were buying to keep, not to flip. One veteran market watcher put it neatly: those who got shares in the IPO don't want to sell, and those who missed out are chasing it. Two forces, one direction. That's what holds a price up.

A thin free float helped, too. With no promoter selling and only a sliver of the company available to trade, there wasn't much stock to go around.

Parent Reliance Industries, meanwhile, fell more than 3%. Analysts call it the classic holding-company discount. Once a subsidiary lists, the market stops stuffing its full value into the parent's price.

Borrowed conviction

Now for the part that makes grown-ups nervous. Investors who missed the IPO borrowed to buy in. About ₹2,227 crore of broker funding went into Jio on debut day, and 93% of the day's rise in NSE's margin book went to this one stock. Brokers happily offered the leverage once NSE put Jio in its highly liquid category.

Think of it as roughly 3-4% of a day's cash trading in the market, riding on one newcomer. Leverage is a lovely friend on the way up. On the way down, a 5-6% fall can bring real margin pressure.

Thursday offered a small preview of the nerves. Jio dipped about 2.5% to ₹1,381 as some booked profits, then recovered to close at ₹1,421.6.

The price tag versus the business

Zoom out. At around ₹13 trillion, Jio now sits in the same league as telecom giants such as Deutsche Telekom and AT&T, though China Mobile still leads. But Jio's yearly revenue is only about ₹1.47 trillion, a fraction of what those giants bring in. So what are investors paying for? Not what Jio earns today, but what it could become. One strategist says the market sees Jio as a technology company, not just a telco.

Bharti Airtel Ltd earns better returns on its capital, 19% against Jio's 10.8%, and more per user each month, ₹264 against ₹215.6. Jio's trump card is sheer scale. With more than 533 million users, it is the world's second-largest operator in a single country after China Mobile.

Then there's the question of what Jio sells next. Telecom still brings in about 88% of revenue. Analysts want digital services, now just 12%, to become a real growth engine, and Jio says AI, cloud and connected devices are the next frontier.

The tariff question

How does Jio close the gap? Mostly by charging more. Airtel recently dropped its entry-level plan and raised postpaid tariffs. Jio hasn't followed yet. Analysts expect industry-wide hikes of 12-15% in the second half of this fiscal year, and Motilal Oswal is pencilling in a 15% hike for March 2027.

Worth remembering is that Jio's ₹300 Prime membership, introduced in August, protects members from hikes until 5 September 2027. And new competition is circling, with Starlink exploring a broader mobile service.

The bell has rung. Now what?

So the party was real. The speeches were heartfelt, the numbers were record-breaking, and even a falling market couldn't spoil it. But Wednesday only proved that people want to own Jio. It didn't prove they'll still want to when the excitement fades, and the spreadsheets take over.

That's the story to watch, because the debut was never really the finish line. It was the starting gun. Jio now has to turn a ₹13 trillion promise into earnings, returns and, eventually, price hikes customers are willing to pay.

Can it? Will tariffs rise in time? And how many of those leveraged bets survive a bad week?

This one has a long way to run.

Mukesh Ambani's telecom journey: from losing Reliance Infocomm to listing Jio Platforms

Jio IPO: A 10-year journey to a mega listing and ambitions beyond telecom

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