Jio Cash Machine: India’s first ₹10-lakh-crore IPO  lands net-debt-free

This article first appeared in BW Businessworld.

Two weeks of headlines about Jio Platforms' IPO have focused on valuation cuts, investor bargaining and Elon Musk. The most important number has been buried all along: ₹27,500 crore. That is how much of the IPO money Jio will use to prepay loans taken by its telecom arm, Reliance Jio Infocomm. On 31 March 2026, Jio's net debt was ₹27,579 crore.

Once the cheque clears, about ₹79 crore is left. Jio lists almost net-debt-free, on the company's own definition of net debt.

A cash machine

The debt figure is only part of the story. The bigger shift is in cash flow.

Two years ago Jio was spending almost everything it earned on 5G. In FY24, EBITDA minus capital spending, a rough measure of free cash, was just ₹1,449 crore. It rose to ₹19,902 crore in FY25 and ₹42,071 crore in FY26, about 29 times in two years.

The 5G network is built. Capex fell from ₹53,510 crore to ₹34,184 crore over the same period while earnings kept rising. In FY26 Jio reported revenue of ₹1.47 lakh crore, up 15%, EBITDA of ₹76,255 crore at a 51.9% margin, and net profit of ₹30,049 crore. Profit is up 40% in two years.

That is why net debt has fallen from ₹48,440 crore in FY24 to ₹27,579 crore before a single IPO rupee has come in. Jio's cash and investments stood at ₹43,202 crore in March.

Paying off dollar debt as the rupee falls

The loans being repaid are dollar and yen borrowings from 16 global banks, among them Bank of America, Citi, HSBC, MUFG and SBI. With the rupee down about 29% since 2020, foreign-currency debt has become more expensive in rupees every year. The IPO lets Jio remove that risk.

The prepayment also carries no penalty: the loan agreements allow early repayment "without any premium or break cost."

Cheaper than Bharti

At ₹1,119 a share, Jio is valued at about 33 times its FY26 earnings per share. Bharti Airtel, its closest rival, was valued at 42 times in the same prospectus.

On that comparison, India's largest telecom operator by customers, with 524 million subscribers, 268 million on 5G and 27 million on home broadband (the most in India), is cheaper than its main competitor.

Average revenue per user (ARPU) has risen from ₹182 to ₹214 a month in two years, and each customer uses 42 GB of data a month.

Into the top four

At ₹10.3 lakh crore, Jio would list as India's fourth most valuable company, behind Reliance (₹15.84 lakh crore), Bharti Airtel (₹11.27 lakh crore) and HDFC Bank (₹10.90 lakh crore), and ahead of ICICI Bank (₹9.72 lakh crore). It would be the first Indian IPO ever priced above ₹10 lakh crore. LIC, the previous benchmark, listed at about ₹6 lakh crore.

The gaps are small. A 6% rise after listing would put Jio ahead of HDFC Bank, and less than 10% would put it ahead of Bharti.

Reliance's hidden value

Reliance shareholders get a revaluation too. Reliance's stake of about 65% in Jio is worth about ₹6.6 lakh crore at the IPO price, around 42% of Reliance's entire market value. And that is before counting its oil-to-chemicals, retail and new-energy businesses.

The 2020 investors have doubled their money

The 13 global investors who put ₹1.52 lakh crore into Jio in 2020 have more than doubled their money in rupee terms. Funds that paid ₹549 a share are at 2.04 times, while Meta and Google, which paid ₹488, are at 2.29 times.

What the debt-free figure doesn't include

There is one large exception. Jio still owes the government ₹1.05 lakh crore in deferred spectrum payments, payable in instalments over the coming years and excluded from its net-debt figure. Interest on those dues is the main reason finance costs rose to ₹8,653 crore in FY26. The IPO doesn't touch that liability.

Debt-free also doesn't mean "every rupee of growth goes to profit." The loans being repaid are cheap, at 1.4–5.18%, so annual interest savings will be modest. What the IPO really changes is the balance sheet. A company that borrowed heavily to build 4G and 5G now generates more than ₹40,000 crore of free cash a year and has almost no net bank debt.

The issue opens on 21 October. The listing will show whether investors value that change.