Six Wall Street giants, one crypto

India’s largest IPO in history opened for trading this morning, and the crowd showed up. Jio Platforms shares debuted on the BSE and NSE at ₹1,358, a premium of 21.36% over the issue price of ₹1,119. By mid-morning, the stock was trading around its listing price. The market capitalisation of Jio Platforms was about ₹12.5 lakh crore at the listing price, making it the second largest listed company in India.

The real question for long-term investors is not what happened this morning. It is what Mukesh Ambani’s team must now prove over the next five years.

What Jio Actually Is

Jio Platforms operates a digital connectivity and technology business with mobile telecommunications at its core, with home broadband, enterprise services, and digital applications forming part of its wider operations. Its principal telecom subsidiary served 524.4 million customers as of March 31, 2026. That scale is almost incomprehensible. It carries roughly 60% of India’s mobile data traffic.

The financial record is solid. Revenue grew 14.6% in FY2026 to ₹1,46,885 crore, while EBITDA grew 18.8% and net profit climbed 15.1% to ₹30,049 crore. EBITDA margins have remained above 50% in recent years, including FY2026. Those are numbers Charlie Munger would have circled in red, a capital-intensive business delivering half its revenue as operating profit is worth examining carefully.

The Compounder Question

Here is where the thesis gets tested. The IPO proceeds are not funding a new network or an AI moonshot. Jio Platforms is using up to ₹27,500 crore from the offering to repay or prepay borrowings of Reliance Jio Infocomm. That is prudent balance-sheet management, and Akash Ambani has said the company is moving toward becoming net debt-free, but it does not by itself widen the moat.

The moat-widening story rests on ARPU. Average revenue per user rose from ₹181.7 in FY2024 to about ₹215.6 in the June 2026 quarter. The direction is right, but the gap to Airtel remains wide. In the June 2026 quarter, Jio reported monthly ARPU of ₹215.6 while Airtel’s India mobile ARPU was ₹264, meaning Airtel generated roughly ₹48 more per customer each month. Multiply that by 500 million subscribers and the revenue opportunity becomes obvious. So does the difficulty of closing it without losing price-sensitive customers.

What Could Go Wrong

Brokerage risk lists around the IPO have pointed to familiar pressure points: spectrum costs, regulatory changes, competitive intensity affecting ARPU and churn, reliance on group entities, and leverage and foreign-exchange exposure. There is also an accounting subtlety worth noting. Jio carries ₹1,04,514 crore in deferred spectrum payments, a separate obligation that is typically discussed outside conventional net debt. These remain relevant financial commitments even after bank borrowings are reduced.

Valuation is not obviously dangerous. At 34.33 times FY26 earnings, Jio enters the market below many peer multiples cited around the IPO. But a discount to a richly valued peer is not the same as being cheap.

The Long-Term Verdict

The business Ambani has built is genuinely exceptional: continental scale, structural cost advantages, and a network that will be increasingly difficult to replicate as 5G deepens. Global investors put about $20 billion into Jio Platforms in 2020 at an equity valuation around $65 billion. Whether those investors sell shares now will depend on their own lock-ups and portfolio choices, but their willingness to fund the platform at that scale says something about their conviction in the long runway ahead.

The compounder case requires Jio to close the ARPU gap with Airtel through broadband penetration, enterprise growth, and disciplined tariff increases, without triggering meaningful subscriber churn. That is achievable. It is not guaranteed. Investors buying above the issue price are paying for a future that still needs to be earned.