Reliance Jio Infocomm and the National Stock Exchange (NSE), together targeting roughly $6 billion in fundraising, are both expected to file draft IPO papers within days of each other this week, a double filing that would mark the most significant moment yet for India’s primary market in 2026.
Jio's filing is the bigger prize. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's telecom giant could lodge a draft prospectus for its expected $4 billion offering with capital markets regulator Sebi ahead of Reliance Industries’ closely watched annual general meeting (AGM) on Friday, according to a Financial Times report.
Last August, Ambani, among Asia's wealthiest tycoons, had promised shareholders he would finally bring India's largest wireless carrier to market in the first half of 2026. He now looks set to miss that deadline, capping a difficult year in which Reliance's share price has fallen around 15%, while net profit for the quarter ended March slid 13% year-on-year as turmoil in the Gulf weighed on the group's core refining business, the FT reported.
Also Read | Mukesh Ambani’s Jio may file for IPO within days: Report
At $4 billion, Jio's IPO would eclipse Hyundai Motor India's $3.3 billion share sale to become the largest listing in Indian history. The Economic Times reported in May, citing people familiar with the matter, that Reliance has been reworking the deal's structure, shifting it from a planned offer-for-sale to a fully fresh issue, after running into disagreements with existing investors over pricing.
Hard on Jio's heels is the NSE, India's dominant bourse, which is expected to file its own draft papers with Sebi by Friday, according to a senior investment banker cited by ETMarkets. "NSE will file its IPO papers by Friday," the banker said, adding that the move could help revive sentiment across the broader new-issue market. Some media reports say the filing could be as soon as today.
The filing would cap years of delay driven by regulatory hurdles and legacy legal disputes. NSE currently changes hands in the unlisted market around Rs 1,950-2,050 a share, implying a valuation near Rs 5 lakh crore to make it among India's most valuable listed financial institutions.
Also Read | Will SpaceX's $75 billion IPO set the ball rolling for Reliance Jio and NSE listings in India?
Nitant Darekar, a research analyst at Bonanza, said the exchange is already commanding rich valuations in that unlisted market: "NSE remains a capital-light near-monopoly," he said, noting that the stock trades near 45 times FY26 earnings — expensive by most yardsticks, though still cheaper than domestic peers BSE, near 70 times, and MCX, near 80 times. Darekar credited the recent settlement of NSE's long-running co-location dispute with removing a key overhang on the listing, while cautioning that the exchange's earnings remain tied to often-volatile derivatives trading volumes, particularly following recent regulatory changes to the futures and options segment.
The offering itself is expected to raise more than Rs 20,000 crore, or between $2–2.5 billion, structured entirely as an offer for sale. That means NSE itself will receive none of the proceeds; existing shareholders will sell about 4–4.5% of their combined stake and pocket the cash directly, rather than the exchange raising fresh growth capital.
Complicating matters further is the sharp expansion of NSE’s shareholder base, which grew from 39,201 investors in March 2025 to 159,394 by June and 186,481 by December, driven largely by a surge in activity in the unlisted market.
Both deals are launching into a far tougher market than bankers had anticipated at the start of the year. A combination of a broader equity downturn and the US-Israel war with Iran has dampened what had been on course to be a third consecutive record year for Indian IPOs, with total listing proceeds so far in 2026 down 39% year-on-year to Rs 198 billion ($2.1 billion), according to data from Prime Database.
The renewed push also comes in the shadow of a far larger global benchmark: Elon Musk’s SpaceX recently completed a $75 billion initial public offering, the largest in history, placing the rocket maker among the most valuable listed companies in the world. That blockbuster debut has added fresh momentum to India’s own mega-IPO ambitions, with Jio and NSE among the key candidates it has emboldened.
For a primary market that has spent much of 2026 searching for a fresh trigger, a successful double filing this week would be exactly that. Market participants say a completed NSE listing alone could rank among the biggest capital-markets events the country has seen in years, giving India’s dominant exchange operator a formal market valuation and investors a direct stake in the growth of its core franchise. All eyes now turn to Friday.
