For most of 2026, India's IPO market has been closed for business after the Iran war scared off investors and sent Indian stocks down more than 9% on the year. The country lost its spot as the world's fifth-largest equity market - first to Taiwan, then South Korea.
Two filings in 24 hours just put the lights back on.
On Thursday, India's National Stock Exchange filed its IPO papers, and on Friday, Mukesh Ambani's Jio Platforms filed for what's expected to be one of the country's largest IPOs ever.
Jio plans to issue up to 270 million shares, with proceeds going toward paying down debt at Reliance Jio Infocomm - the wireless arm sitting inside Jio Platforms. Reliance Industries owns more than 66% of the parent, while Google holds 7.7% and Meta holds nearly 10%.
For scale: Jio's wireless business has 526.94 million subscribers, which works out to about half of the entire Indian internet market in one company.
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Ambani originally told shareholders Jio would list before the middle of this year, but that timeline broke when the Iran war erupted and froze investor confidence across Indian assets.
India has been treated as the "anti-AI" trade by global investors, with no major homegrown AI plays as capital rotated out toward the U.S. AI capex story. Adani and Jabil are now chasing a $3 trillion AI hardware market inside India to try to change that.
Bharti Airtel, Jio's main competitor, sits at about 35% market share with a market cap of over $120 billion and trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of over 42, giving investors a public benchmark for whatever Jio prices at.
Hyundai Motor India's $3.3 billion 2024 listing still holds the record for the country's largest IPO, and both Jio and NSE could clear it. With the Iran war winding down and Indian assets starting to lift, the world's two biggest pending IPOs are now both Indian.
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