Exclusive: Reliance Jio in talks with investors to sell 8% of individual stakes in IPO, sources say

Exclusive: Reliance Jio in talks with investors to sell 8% of individual stakes in IPO, sources say

HONG KONG/NEW DELHI, March 25 (Reuters) – Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio Platforms has held talks ‌with 13 marquee foreign investors to sell down 8% of individual stakes in an upcoming Mumbai listing of the telecoms-to-AI company, sources familiar with the matter said.

Ambani’s Jio Platforms, which houses the world’s second-largest telecom company by users ​after China Mobile (600941.SS), opens new tab, is set to file for approval of its IPO in Mumbai ​as early as this week.

Big investors on the list include Meta, with a ⁠stake of 9.99%, and Google, with 7.73%, followed by Vista Equity Partners and KKR. Three Gulf ​sovereign funds, the Public Investment Fund, Mubadala and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority are also investors.

The stake sale “would ​be around 8% for everyone,” said one of the two sources involved in the IPO process, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the discussions were confidential.

KKR declined to comment, while Reliance and the other investors did not ​immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Reuters calculations show each investors’ sale of 8% of their ​holdings effectively implies about 2.5% of Reliance Jio’s total outstanding shares offered in the listing, as it has ‌planned.

Meta selling ⁠8% of its 9.99% holding would mean a 0.8% stake sale by the U.S. tech giant, for example.

While the talks have focused on each investor selling 8% of its holding, the final numbers could still change.

The Reliance Jio IPO is being structured as an offer-for-sale, a common strategy in ​India where no new funds ​are raised by ⁠the companies and existing shareholders offload stakes, to be taken up by the public and other investors.

“Total stake sale will be 2.5% to 3%,” said the ​second source aware of IPO plans. “Reliance wants to leave money on the ​table for retail ⁠investors and there is no decision yet on valuation of the company.”

In 2020, Jio Platforms raised more than $20.5 billion from stake sales to foreign investors.

In November, investment bank Jefferies estimated Reliance Jio’s valuation at $180 ⁠billion. Sources ​told Reuters in January the IPO could be worth ​as much as $4 billion, though final numbers will only be decided later.

Editing by Clarence Fernandez

Kane Wu covers M&A, private equity, venture capital and investment banks in Asia. She tracks the region’s most high-profile deals, fundraisings as well as investment trends amidst geopolitical, macroeconomic and regulatory changes. She was nominated for a SOPA Excellence in Business Reporting award for coverage of China regulatory crackdown in 2021. Prior to Reuters, she worked at the Wall Street Journal and also wrote about Asia’s loan market for Thomson Reuters Basis Point. She is based in Hong Kong.

Aditya Kalra is the Company News Editor for Reuters in India, overseeing business coverage and reporting stories on some of the world’s biggest companies. He joined Reuters in 2008 and has in recent years written stories on challenges and strategies of a wide array of companies — from Amazon, Google and Walmart to Xiaomi, Starbucks and Reliance. He also extensively works on deeply-reported and investigative business stories.