After blockbuster Jio IPO Akash Ambani steps into spotlight with maiden investor call

New Delhi, Oct 30 (PTI) Akash Ambani, who largely operated in the shadow of his father, billionaire Mukesh Ambani, made his first appearance at Reliance Industries' quarterly investor call on Friday, speaking publicly for the first time about the record listing of Jio Platforms, the company he runs.

    The 35-year-old managing director of Jio Platforms joined the call after Reliance presented July-September results. It was a visible step into a spotlight that has mostly belonged to his father, Chairman Mukesh Ambani, who has led the conglomerate for more than two decades.

    "When I think about what has happened over the last week, and really a process that started at the end of August, I never thought that this would be the outcome," Akash Ambani said.

    Jio's Rs 30,213 crore offering, India's largest, closed with demand far above what was on offer.

    "We were raising around Rs 30,000 crore, and we saw demand of over Rs 7.5 lakh crore. That's 24.5 times subscription," Ambani said.

    The shares, priced at Rs 1,119 apiece, listed on October 28 at a premium of about 26.7 per cent. That gave Jio a market value of roughly Rs 13.1 lakh crore, making it India's second most valuable company behind its parent, Reliance Industries.

    "Records were broken across all categories," Ambani said, citing qualified institutional buyers, high-net-worth individuals, retail investors, shareholders and employees.

    On the final day in the boardroom, he said: "The QIB category broke a record in the last 90 seconds, surpassing LG Energy Solution. We had a big celebration at that point in time".

    He said the debut came in a weak market. "We had foreign outflows of close to Rs 48,000 crore. And in a market situation like that, for us to make our debut, we were very proud that people were recognising the business that we have built."

    Ambani pushed back on the idea that Jio's moment came suddenly. "They say these are overnight successes. I can tell you that we have put in extremely hard work over the last 10 years to build this business, and we will continue to do so".

    Among his personal highlights, he named the demand, "an anchor book of a kind that has not been seen in India before" drawing international and domestic funds, and the arrival of technology-focused investors "the likes of Dragoneer," which he said recognised Jio "as a technology company".

    He also pointed to the rupee's move on the second day of the issue. "That was something that I don't think any other IPO has ever caused."

    The public emergence of Akash as Jio's leading executive comes against the backdrop of Reliance's gradual generational transition. He was appointed chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm in 2022, a move widely viewed as part of Mukesh Ambani's succession planning, and subsequently took on the leadership of Jio Platforms.

    At the listing ceremony, he told Mukesh Ambani, who did not speak and was seen in tears, that he and his siblings would spend their lives proving worthy of the legacy handed to them. The senior Ambani was largely absent from the investor and media roadshows in the run-up to the IPO, not making a single public statement. While he let his children lead the show, his imprint on the fundraise was unmistakable.

    The offering is Reliance's first public issue in about two decades. The retail portion was covered 2.7 times, while employees and existing Reliance shareholders bid for 2.93 and 7.6 times their allotments. The response echoed the small-investor following that his grandfather Dhirubhai Ambani built, starting with Reliance's 1977 IPO.

    Aakash Ambani's maiden earnings-call appearance is another visible step in that transition, placing him directly before the investment community at a defining moment for the group's digital business.

    Jio, launched in 2016, transformed India's telecom market with aggressively priced voice and data services and has since built a subscriber base of 542.4 million, including 300 million on 5G, and reported a quarterly profit of Rs 8,387 crore. Telecom still accounts for the bulk of its revenue and profit, and Akash has pushed Jio’s identity as a technology platform rather than a mobile operator, with AI services as the next leg.

    Meta holds a stake of nearly 10 per cent in the company.

    Looking ahead, Ambani said the listing was "just a new milestone".

    "We believe that the value we can create over the next decade or so is even greater than what we have created in our first decade," he said.

    He concluded with a line he had used in his speech at the National Stock Exchange: "Never let today's achievement limit tomorrow's ambition".

    "And that's what we want to carry forward as a company with Jio."

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)