Project Jupiter was a highly secretive, year-long internal Reliance mission, led by executives including CFO V. Srikanth, that meticulously planned India's largest-ever IPO for Jio Platforms, aiming for a valuation exceeding $130 billion. The operation, designed to minimize digital trails through physical document circulation and limited meetings, involved overcoming three key challenges: securing regulatory leniency by influencing SEBI to ease the public float requirement from 5% to 2.5% for large companies, convincing major investors like KKR, Meta, and Alphabet to dilute their holdings, and managing a significant structural shift from an initial Offer for Sale (OFS) plan to an all-primary issuance. This change ensures that the estimated ₹37,700 crore ($4 billion) raised will remain within Jio for debt repayment and general corporate purposes, potentially surpassing Hyundai Motor India's 2024 offering to become the country's biggest public debut.

Project Jupiter was a highly secretive, year-long internal Reliance mission, led by executives including CFO V. Srikanth, that meticulously planned India's largest-ever IPO for Jio Platforms, aiming for a valuation exceeding $130 billion. The operation, designed to minimize digital trails through physical document circulation and limited meetings, involved overcoming three key challenges: securing regulatory leniency by influencing SEBI to ease the public float requirement from 5% to 2.5% for large companies, convincing major investors like KKR, Meta, and Alphabet to dilute their holdings, and managing a significant structural shift from an initial Offer for Sale (OFS) plan to an all-primary issuance. This change ensures that the estimated ₹37,700 crore ($4 billion) raised will remain within Jio for debt repayment and general corporate purposes, potentially surpassing Hyundai Motor India's 2024 offering to become the country's biggest public debut.

Project Jupiter was a highly secretive, year-long internal Reliance mission, led by executives including CFO V. Srikanth, that meticulously planned India's largest-ever IPO for Jio Platforms, aiming for a valuation exceeding $130 billion. The operation, designed to minimize digital trails through physical document circulation and limited meetings, involved overcoming three key challenges: securing regulatory leniency by influencing SEBI to ease the public float requirement from 5% to 2.5% for large companies, convincing major investors like KKR, Meta, and Alphabet to dilute their holdings, and managing a significant structural shift from an initial Offer for Sale (OFS) plan to an all-primary issuance. This change ensures that the estimated ₹37,700 crore ($4 billion) raised will remain within Jio for debt repayment and general corporate purposes, potentially surpassing Hyundai Motor India's 2024 offering to become the country's biggest public debut.

Long before Mukesh Ambani walked onto the stage at Reliance Industries' Annual General Meeting on June 19, 2026, to announce that Jio Platforms was ready to go public, a small and tightly guarded team inside Reliance had already spent the better part of a year making it possible. The internal mission had a codename: Project Jupiter, named, according to Bloomberg, as a reference to the sheer scale and ambition of what was being planned.

The effort was reportedly led by a small circle that included Reliance's Chief Financial Officer V. Srikanth, executive KR Raja and Jio's Anshuman Thakur.

READ: Jio Platforms IPO values firm above $130 billion: All you need to know

To keep the operation airtight, draft prospectuses and internal memoranda were circulated largely in physical form, emails were kept to a minimum to avoid digital trails, and meetings were restricted to the most senior levels.

Kotak Mahindra Capital and Morgan Stanley were brought in first, in October 2025, as the lead investment banks, though they were not formally appointed until at least December 2025, an unusual arrangement that allowed work to proceed while the deal was still being structured.

By the time the draft red herring prospectus was filed with SEBI on June 19, 2026, the syndicate had reportedly grown to 19 investment banks.

The 3 problems Reliance had to solve

Bloomberg's report reveals that Reliance was simultaneously trying to solve three structural challenges: getting regulators to ease IPO rules, convincing major investors to sell, and keeping the structure secret.

On the regulatory front, SEBI eased its minimum public float requirement in September 2025, reducing the threshold for companies valued above ₹5 trillion from 5 per cent to 2.5 per cent. This was formally notified by the Centre only in March 2026.

Major investors including KKR, Meta and Alphabet agreed to dilute approximately 8 per cent of their respective holdings on a pro-rata basis to help Jio meet the public float requirement.

A structural change

Perhaps the most consequential decision was the change on the IPO structure itself. Reliance had originally planned an Offer for Sale (OFS), in which existing shareholders would offload about 2.8 per cent of Jio. But that meant that the money would flow out of India to foreign investors.

However, some investors baulked at the valuation given weak market conditions and the impact of a falling rupee on their dollar returns. Reliance ultimately switched to an all-primary issuance. This meant that entirely fresh shares are being sold, and every rupee of the approximately ₹37,700 crore (~$4 billion) being raised would stay with Jio in India.

The proceeds, as per the DRHP, are earmarked primarily for debt repayment of ₹27,500 crore, with the remainder for general corporate purposes.

If the IPO goes through as planned, it will surpass Hyundai Motor India's ₹27,870 crore offering in 2024 to become the largest public offering in Indian history.

[This article uses data from the DRHP and publicly reported information.]

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