As Jio files for India’s biggest-ever IPO, it’s planning a Starlink rival in orbit

At its annual shareholder meeting on Friday, Reliance unveiled two things at once: paperwork for what could be India’s biggest-ever stock-market listing, and a plan to put a Starlink rival into orbit.

Jio Platforms, the digital and telecom arm of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, filed draft papers for an initial public offering widely expected to rank as the largest in the country’s history. At the same meeting, Jio set out plans for a sovereign low-orbit satellite network to deliver broadband across India, a direct challenge to Musk’s Starlink.

The listing

Jio filed its draft prospectus with the regulator on Friday, proposing a fresh issue of up to 270 million shares, with most of the roughly $3bn to $4bn raised earmarked to cut debt.

Reliance owns about 66 per cent of Jio Platforms, with Google and Meta holding minority stakes from their 2020 investments. If it lands near the top of estimates, the listing would surpass Hyundai Motor India’s record to become the country’s biggest.

Jio is no minnow going public: it has more than 500 million subscribers, close to half of India’s internet market, up from the 331 million it had when it became the country’s largest carrier.

The Starlink challenge

The growth story Jio is selling alongside the IPO reaches into orbit. According to Bloomberg, the company is planning a constellation of around 1,650 low-Earth-orbit satellites, at an estimated cost of $10bn to $15bn, to beam broadband and direct-to-device connectivity across India. It has filed the plan with India’s space regulator, IN-SPACe.

The twist is that only months ago, Jio and rival Bharti Airtel signed deals to distribute Starlink inside India.

Now Jio wants its own network, a shift that sharpens a rivalry that is already personal: Ambani and Musk have clashed over how India should award satellite spectrum.

Why pair them

The timing is deliberate. SpaceX has just raised $75bn in the largest IPO in history on the strength of Starlink, and Jio is assembling its own version of that narrative. Owning connectivity end to end, from hundreds of millions of mobile subscribers on the ground to a constellation overhead, is exactly the kind of moat-and-growth pitch that lifts a valuation just as investors are asked to price it.

Jio is also recasting itself as a deep-tech company rather than a telecom operator: it says it has climbed into the global top 20 of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s patent rankings, on the back of work in 5G, 6G, AI and satellite communications.

Why it matters

For India, the appeal is sovereignty: high-speed connectivity for the hardest-to-reach parts of the country without depending on a US operator New Delhi cannot control.

For Starlink, the threat is real. Its growth maths is already getting harder, and losing primacy in the world’s most populous market would hurt.

The catch is that building a constellation is brutally hard and hugely capital-intensive, the satellite plan is still a proposal under review, and Jio is starting years behind. But few rivals can outspend Reliance on home turf, and it has just shown it can raise the money to try.