Akash Ambani, the eldest son of industrialist Mukesh Ambani, is set to take centre stage as Jio Platform Ltd, the telecom and technology arm of oil-to-retail behemoth Reliance, prepares for a stock market debut next week.
Jio’s mega IPO continued to draw strong interest from investors, with bids for all categories, including the retail section, fully booked on the second day of bidding on Thursday.
The ₹30,213-crore IPO was subscribed 5.57 times, with a day left in the bidding. As of now, the IPO has attracted bids worth ₹3.73 lakh crore, including offers received from anchor investors.
Qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) led the demand, with their portion subscribed 13.29 times. They bid for 651.46 crore shares against 49.01 crore shares reserved for the category.
Akash Ambani, 34, is the managing director of Jio Platforms, where his father is a non-executive chairman.
In a sign of his growing clout, Akash led the pitch at the JPL IPO event last week, where he briefed on the company’s 53.3 crore customers and profit margins. While his twin sister Isha shared the stage, their father skipped the event.
“I’m here as a representative of the entire company,” he said.
Industry executives who work with Akash described him as an extremely approachable executive who is very hands-on with technology.
While Akash weighs in on “some of the bigger calls”, he doesn’t interfere in day-to-day business decisions. But he does deal with their most marquee investors, including Meta, said one executive, who has worked closely on the IPO and with Akash.
“He is the one who makes the calls to Mark Zuckerberg,” the executive added.
Meta is among Jio’s largest shareholders with a near 10 per cent stake.
In 2020, it joined Google and other global investors in putting ₹1.52 trillion into the company, worth $20.5 billion at the time.
However, Akash and his father — who are both night owls — manage investor relationships separately, the industry executive said.
Mukesh is closer to many sovereign wealth funds, while his son takes the position as Reliance’s Silicon Valley man.
Reliance and Meta did not respond to Reuters queries.
Creating the brand
Akash holds a bachelor’s in economics from Brown University in the US and, as an avid sports enthusiast, plays a key role in the management of the Indian Premier League cricket franchise Mumbai Indians. Married in 2019 to Shloka Mehta, he has two children.
The interest from small (retail) investors is reminiscent of how Akash’s grandfather Dhirubhai Ambani, who died in 2002, built Reliance’s brand image with shareholders, holding large-scale meets in Mumbai’s open grounds in the 1980s that turned Reliance into a company that helps create long-term wealth.
Jio’s parent, Reliance Industries Ltd — which has a current market capitalisation of $172 billion — has risen 330-fold since 1990.
As Akash spoke at the event last week, held in the sprawling campus of Reliance Corporate Park in Navi Mumbai’s Ghansoli, a garlanded portrait of a smiling Dhirubhai was propped on an easel, while the screen showed black-and-white photos of old shareholder meetings.