India’s biggest-ever public share sale, the ₹30,213 crore initial public offering of Jio Platforms, was subscribed about three times on its first day, driven by large institutions. Retail investors, who have more days to bid, had not yet filled their share.

The issue opened on October 21 and closes on October 23. The company is selling 27 crore fresh shares in a price band of ₹1,065 to ₹1,119, and listing is expected on October 28. At the top of the band, the company is valued at about ₹10.3 lakh crore, according to Inc42.

What the numbers show. A press release circulated after the first day puts total subscription at 3.2 times. It says qualified institutional buyers (QIBs), such as mutual funds and insurers, bid for 9.42 times their portion. Other categories were also oversubscribed, it says: non-institutional investors (wealthy individuals and firms) at 1.83 times, employees at 1.36 times and existing Reliance shareholders at 1.46 times. Figures from broker sites earlier in the evening were close: HDFC Sky reported 3.04 times overall and 9.04 times for QIBs as of 5:55 p.m., while other sites’ snapshots varied through the day. These are not official final figures, and we have not checked them against NSE or BSE data.

The company, in the press release, says categories “comfortably crossed the 100% mark on Day 1 itself,” but the broker data shows the retail portion was below full subscription, at 0.66 to 0.73 times. The release does say retail investors bid more than ₹6,900 crore, which it calls the highest day-one retail demand in Indian IPO history. That is consistent with the retail portion being about 70% filled: roughly 8.5 crore shares at ₹1,119 is about ₹9,500 crore. We could not verify the “record” claim. Retail investors often bid late in an issue, so the first-day figure says little about the final outcome.

On October 19, the company raised about ₹8,110 crore from anchor investors at ₹1,119 a share, with demand reported at more than 30 times the size, according to Inc42. Investors named include BlackRock, Fidelity, Allianz, Goldman Sachs, the Government of Singapore, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, LIC and major mutual funds. The release says total demand was ₹3.2 lakh crore, including the anchor book.

The company, in a statement, stresses that the offer is entirely new shares, unlike Hyundai Motor India’s and LG Electronics India’s issues, which were share sales by their parents, and says the money will fund network expansion, cloud and AI. According to PTI, however, up to ₹27,500 crore of net proceeds will be used to repay borrowings of Reliance Jio Infocomm, with general corporate purposes covering the rest. The two descriptions are not the same, and readers should check the offer document.

While the company says that it was the “fastest” IPO to be fully subscribed, in 100 minutes, bankers expect Jio Platforms to list India’s five most valuable companies is unattributed.