Two Giants, One Week: What the NSE and Jio Platforms IPOs Mean for You

There are weeks in the markets when not much happens, and then there are weeks like the one India just had. In the space of three days in mid-June 2026, two of the most talked-about companies in the country quietly filed the paperwork to go public, and between them, they could end up raising well over ₹65,000 crore.

On June 17, the National Stock Exchange (NSE), yes, the exchange itself, filed its draft papers with SEBI. Two days later, on June 19, Jio Platforms, the telecom-and-digital arm of Reliance Industries, did the same, with Mukesh Ambani announcing it on stage at Reliance's 49th Annual General Meeting.

Both filings are still at the "draft" stage, so you can't buy shares yet. But the size, the names, and the timing make this a moment worth understanding. Here's a walk-through of what's actually going on, why these two IPOs are so different under the hood, and what an ordinary investor should keep in mind.

First, a quick translation

When a company wants to list on the stock market, the starting gun is a document called the DRHP- the Draft Red Herring Prospectus. It's a long, detailed file lodged with the market regulator, SEBI, that lays out the company's business, its financials, the risks, who owns it, and how the share sale will be structured.

Filing the DRHP doesn't mean the IPO is open. SEBI now reviews it, typically over roughly one to three months, and comes back with observations. Only after that does the company announce the price band, the lot size, and the actual bidding dates. So for both NSE and Jio, the honest answer to "when can I apply?" is: not yet, probably later in 2026.

With that out of the way, let's look at each.

The NSE IPO: the exchange finally lists itself

There's a neat irony here. NSE is where thousands of companies list their shares, and it has spent nearly a decade trying to list its own. Its first attempt dates back to 2016, but the plan got tangled up in regulatory scrutiny, most notably the long-running "co-location" controversy over unfair access to trading systems.

That knot finally came undone over the past year. NSE reached a settlement with SEBI worth around ₹1,388 crore, received a no-objection certificate from the regulator on January 30, 2026, and its board approved the IPO in early February. The DRHP followed on June 17.

How the deal is structured. This is the important part. The NSE IPO is a pure Offer for Sale (OFS), about 14.89 crore shares (face value ₹1 each), representing roughly 6% of the company. In an OFS, existing shareholders sell their stock to the public, and the money goes to those sellers, not to NSE itself. The exchange isn't raising fresh capital; it doesn't really need to, given how cash-rich it is.

So who's selling? A long list of institutions, led by the State Bank of India (the single largest seller), along with Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, two Mauritius-based investment vehicles, Bank of Baroda, and several public-sector insurers. Notably, the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), NSE's biggest single shareholder at around 10.7%, is reportedly not selling in this round.

A quirk worth knowing: because a stock exchange can't list on itself, NSE's shares are slated to trade on BSE, its rival.

The financials. NSE is one of the most profitable businesses in India. In FY26, it reported total income of roughly ₹18,700 crore and profit after tax of about ₹10,302 crore, with profit margins north of 50%, figures that comfortably beat most global exchange operators. That said, FY26 was a slightly softer year: revenue from operations slipped about 3% and net profit fell more than 15% from the previous year, partly because regulatory changes cooled India's frenzied derivatives trading. Reported earnings per share were around ₹41.6 for FY26, down from ₹49.2 the year before.

The estimated issue size doing the rounds is roughly ₹30,000 crore, though the final number depends on the price band SEBI eventually clears.

The Jio Platforms IPO: India's biggest ever, by a distance

If the NSE listing is a long-delayed homecoming, Jio's is a coronation. Analysts widely expect it to be the largest IPO in Indian history.

How the deal is structured. Jio's is the mirror image of NSE's. It's a pure fresh issue, up to 27 crore new shares (face value ₹10 each), with no Offer for Sale at all. That means every rupee raised flows into the company, not to existing investors. Reliance has said the bulk of the proceeds, around ₹27,500 crore, will go toward repaying borrowings at its telecom subsidiary, Reliance Jio Infocomm, with the rest for general corporate purposes.

The eye-watering numbers. The issue is expected to raise somewhere around ₹37,700 crore (roughly $3.8 billion), enough to edge past Hyundai Motor India's 2024 listing as the country's biggest. The implied valuation is staggering: estimates run from about $130 billion to $180 billion, with the figure most bankers anchor around landing near $137 billion (about ₹11.5 lakh crore). At that level, Jio would be among India's two or three most valuable listed companies from day one and comfortably above telecom rival Bharti Airtel.

One reason the float looks small (only about 2.5–2.9% of the company) is a rule change in March 2026 that lets companies valued above ₹5 trillion list with a smaller minimum public stake.

Who owns it. Reliance Industries holds about 66.4%. The rest of the marquee names trace back to Jio's blockbuster 2020 fundraising: Meta (just under 10%), Google (about 7.7%), plus KKR, Vista, Silver Lake, and sovereign wealth funds from Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia. Because this is a fresh issue, none of them is selling now.

A perk for Reliance shareholders. If you hold RIL shares, the DRHP provides for a special reserved quota, a detail that has investors watching RIL stock closely.

The financials. Jio is both huge and growing. Its telecom arm served 524.4 million customers as of March 2026, more than the entire population of the United States, with about 268.5 million already on 5G. For FY26, Jio Platforms reported revenue of roughly ₹1.47 lakh crore, EBITDA of about ₹76,255 crore, and net profit of around ₹30,049 crore. Its net debt has fallen sharply over two years, and the IPO proceeds are designed to cut it further.

Jio's shares are expected to list on both BSE and NSE.

NSE vs Jio: same week, opposite playbooks

It's easy to lump these together as "two big IPOs," but they're structured almost as opposites, which is a useful lesson in itself:

The OFS-versus-fresh-issue distinction matters more than it sounds. With NSE, you're buying shares from investors cashing out part of a long-held position. With Jio, your money strengthens the company's balance sheet directly. Neither approach is inherently better; plenty of excellent companies list via OFS, but it's worth knowing where your rupees actually land.

The risks — because there always are some

Both DRHPs are upfront about what could go wrong, and it's worth taking those sections seriously rather than skimming past them.

For NSE, the headline risks revolve around regulation and concentration: a large slice of its profits depends on derivatives trading, which SEBI has been actively tightening. Any further regulatory shift, or a sustained slowdown in trading volumes, hits revenue directly. Its history of compliance run-ins is also part of the public record.

For Jio, the DRHP flags the usual heavyweight concerns: telecom licences and spectrum that come up for renewal (the main licence in 2033, most spectrum around 2041–42) with no guarantee of favourable terms; heavy ongoing capital needs and debt covenants; cybersecurity and network-outage risks; and the fact that the "Jio" brand is shared across many Reliance group companies, so reputational issues elsewhere can rub off.

So what should an ordinary investor do?

Mostly: wait and read. Neither IPO is open, and the single most important number, the price, hasn't been set for either. A great company at the wrong price can still be a poor investment, and that judgement only becomes possible once SEBI clears the drafts and the price bands appear.

A sensible checklist for both, when the time comes: look at the final valuation against peers (Jio versus Airtel; NSE versus BSE and global exchanges), read the risk factors properly, ignore the grey-market hype, and apply only if the risk-reward genuinely makes sense for your own goals. If you're an RIL shareholder, it's also worth understanding the reserved quota before the record date.

Two of India's most significant companies heading to the market in the same week is a genuinely big moment for the country's capital markets. But "big" and "right for your portfolio" are two different questions, and the gap between the DRHP filing and the day you can actually invest is exactly the time to figure out which is which.

This article is for general information only and is not investment advice. IPO details such as price band, dates, and final issue size are not yet confirmed and will follow SEBI's review of the draft prospectuses. Always read the official offer documents and consider consulting a registered financial adviser before investing.

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