Jio Platforms Ltd. hasn't hit the market yet, but the price guessing has already started on crypto exchanges. Bitget began offering a perpetual futures contract tied to Jio on Wednesday, which seems to mark the first time a crypto venue has launched this kind of product linked to an Indian company. The listing gives round-the-clock access for traders who want to stake out a view on Jio's value before shares land on Indian exchanges.
Perpetual futures never expire. Instead, funding payments passed between long and short positions help keep pricing anchored to the underlying reference.
Bitget's contract settles in Tether's USDT and trades 24 hours a day. It supports leverage up to 20 times, so the swings can be amplified in both directions. Over the latest 24-hour period, Bitget data showed about $1.4 million of turnover in JIOUSDT.
On Thursday, the contract hovered around $11.93. Translate that across Jio's share base and it points to something near a $110 billion market value, slightly higher than the approximately $107 billion Jio would be worth at the very top of its IPO pricing band.
Jio intends to offer up to 270 million new shares, targeting a band of 1,065 to 1,119 rupees per share, or $11.77 each. Should the final price hit the upper end, proceeds would be around 302 billion rupees ($3.1 billion), which could surpass Hyundai Motor India Ltd.'s 2024 listing as the year's largest in India. Public bidding opens on Oct. 21 and wraps up two days later.
As new ways to trade keep emerging, get clarity each morning with the free Market Briefs newsletter, delivered in minutes
Jio serves as Reliance Industries Ltd.'s telecommunications and digital-services division, under the control of billionaire Mukesh Ambani. The new perp market adds an extra lane for price discovery as the listing approaches.
Perps were once a crypto-native tool for betting on tokens, but they now reach into real-world assets like equities, commodities, and pre-IPO names. Global traders seeking exposure to hard-to-reach private companies are already active in perpetuals linked to SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, CXMT, a Chinese semiconductor firm, and Unitree, a company in robotics. According to a spokesperson for Trade.xyz - one of the leading issuers of real-world-asset perpetual futures on Hyperliquid - the platform intends to roll out a Jio pre-IPO contract this week.
According to Pratik Kala, who serves as a portfolio manager at Apollo Crypto, "Traders of these pre-IPO perpetual futures appear to be enormously informed and successful in pinning the IPO prices of many international IPOs - indicating more and more sophisticated players are using these platforms to express their views."
If you're tracking Jio's debut, the JIOUSDT tape offers a constant read on where sentiment sits, and how that stacks against the formal IPO range. Just remember that leverage and funding flows can skew things, so treat it as a signal among several, not the scoreboard.
Staying informed across crypto and equities is easier when you join the free Market Briefs for quick, plain-English updates
