Witness an emotional generational shift as Mukesh Ambani's children, Akash, Isha, and Anant, take the lead in the record-breaking stock market listing of Jio Platforms, signalling a new era for one of India's largest corporate empires.

Mukesh Ambani became emotional as his children, Akash, Isha, and Anant, led the stock market listing of Jio Platforms, signifying a generational transition in the Reliance empire.

Jio Platforms' IPO was India's largest, raising Rs 30,213 crore ($3.1 billion) and valuing the company at over Rs 12.5 lakh crore ($131 billion) on its debut.

Akash Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Jio, pledged to create shareholder value for the next 50 years, building on Reliance's legacy and expanding into AI, cloud computing, and satellite connectivity.

Isha Ambani highlighted the family's long-standing philosophy of enabling ordinary Indians to participate in the nation's economic growth, linking Jio's IPO to Reliance's founding vision.

The listing ceremony underscored the Ambani children's commitment to serving India and fulfilling national aspirations, with Anant Ambani describing Jio as a public trust.

Mukesh Ambani fought back tears as his three children took the stage at the stock market listing of Jio Platforms Ltd, the digital and technology business he built into a national connectivity giant, in an emotional moment that offered a glimpse of the next generation preparing to carry forward one of India's biggest corporate empires.

The 69-year-old billionaire watched from the National Stock Exchange alongside his wife Nita Ambani, as Akash, Isha and Anant Ambani paid tribute to their father and grandfather Dhirubhai Ambani, and pledged to build on the family's legacy.

He repeatedly wiped tears from his eyes as his children spoke of the sacrifices, ambitions and responsibilities underpinning Jio's journey.

For much of the run-up to the initial public offering, Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd, had kept a relatively low profile at investor roadshows and meetings, leaving his eldest son Akash to take the lead. At Wednesday's listing ceremony, he again ceded the spotlight to the next generation.

Yet his imprint was unmistakable.
The IPO represents the culmination of a decade-long effort to build a digital platform on a scale that has reshaped India's telecommunications market and diversified Reliance beyond its traditional oil-refining and energy businesses.

Jio shares opened 21.4 per cent above their IPO price and rose as much as 23 per cent to Rs 1,375, valuing the company at more than Rs 12.5 lakh crore ($131 billion).

The Rs 30,213 crore ($3.1 billion) offering was India's largest IPO, and the debut made Jio the country's second-most valuable listed company after Reliance Industries.

The initial public offering (IPO) closed last week with bids for 22.19 times the shares on offer, as total demand across the public issue and anchor investor placement crossed Rs 7.4 lakh crore - the highest ever for an Indian IPO - and applications approached a world-beating 1.39 crore.

The rally in the shares on the opening day offered a rare bright spot for investors amid a bruising equity selloff, and a strong opening for a company whose scale, earnings and technological ambitions have made it central to the Ambani family's next chapter.

Vision for Jio's Future
The listing ceremony was more than just the market's verdict. It was also an occasion for the three siblings to articulate a shared vision for Jio while acknowledging the man whose ambition made it possible.

"Today's listing is not a finish line, but a starting line," Akash, Chairman of Reliance Jio and Managing Director of Jio Platforms, said. He promised to create value for shareholders over decades, invoking the record of the parent company.

"What Reliance has done for shareholders for nearly 50 years, Jio will continue to do so for the next 50," he said.
Akash's remarks were the clearest statement of the responsibility now resting on the next generation.

He said he and his siblings had taken the baton from their father and pledged to make Jio bigger, better and more meaningful for India.

The company, he said, had secured more than Rs 7.5 lakh crore in demand during the IPO process and attracted over 1.3 crore Indian investors.

The offering was fully subscribed within 95 minutes, he said, underscoring the scale of investor interest.

Akash said he returned to India after studying abroad to work with his father on the ambition of making the country digital, and described Jio's early years as a venture that began with little more than an idea and a team convinced that every Indian deserved affordable, world-class technology.

Today, its homegrown platforms serve more than 54 crore customers, he said.

The next phase would go beyond affordable data to artificial intelligence, cloud computing, connected devices, satellite connectivity and digital services yet to be imagined.

His sister Isha, a Non-executive Director of Reliance Industries and a Director of Jio Platforms, placed the listing in a longer family history of bringing ordinary Indians into the country's economic growth.

She recalled her father's early involvement in Reliance's first public offering in 1977, when the company raised Rs 2.82 crore at a valuation of Rs 10 crore.

Her grandfather, she said, believed that ordinary families should participate in India's prosperity not merely as spectators, but as owners.

"Almost 50 years later, that trust has come full circle," she said, addressing investors who had backed Jio's debut.

The comparison linked the company's record-breaking offering to the founding philosophy of Reliance: mobilising public capital to finance an ambitious industrial vision.

The difference is that the business now being offered to investors sits at the intersection of telecommunications, digital services and emerging technologies rather than the industrial expansion that defined earlier generations.

Isha also offered a pointed acknowledgement of Akash's role in building the platform, saying she could not recall a single day when he had returned home before midnight during the past 13 years of Jio's journey.

"I could not be prouder to be your sister," she said.
Her tribute to her father brought the ceremony's emotional thread into sharp focus. Ambani, she said, had repeatedly seen a future that others could not yet imagine and found the courage to build what others considered impossible.

"Different industries. Different decades. The same faith in India," she said. "And this is just the beginning."
Anant, a Director of Jio Platforms, framed the listing as a public trust and a national undertaking, invoking the blessings of the family's elders and the aspirations of ordinary Indians.

"Today, Jio is shared with India," he said.
He traced the company's lineage from Dhirubhai Ambani's rise from modest beginnings to his father's construction of Reliance's industrial businesses and, eventually, the ambition to bring internet access to every hand and the wider world to every village.

Anant also credited Isha with sowing the seed of the Jio vision and Akash with making it his own. The company, he said, had been built by the people of India, whose lives it had changed by connecting classrooms, families, patients and communities.

"Jio aapne banaya" (you built Jio), he said. "To fulfil your dreams is our dream."

He described himself and his siblings as "three bodies, but one soul," united by a commitment to serve the country and fulfil the aspirations of its people.

He also thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the vision of Digital India, which he said had given Jio its purpose.

The speeches repeatedly returned to a common theme: the Ambani children would inherit not simply a business, but an obligation to customers, employees and shareholders.

Akash pledged to earn investors' trust through performance, Isha promised integrity and continued growth, and Anant presented Jio's expansion as part of a wider national ambition.

The listing gives investors direct exposure to a business that has spent a decade expanding connectivity and building a vast customer base, while raising expectations that it can translate that reach into sustained earnings and new growth engines.

Isha said Jio generated about $15.5 billion in revenue and $8 billion in earnings during the year, figures she cited to underscore the financial strength of the decade-old business.
Akash's next challenge will be to sustain that performance while investing in technologies that could require significant capital and face fierce competition.

For Reliance, the listing also marks a significant step in the evolution of an empire that spans energy, retail and digital services.

Jio's public-market debut creates a distinct listed vehicle for its technology ambitions and brings a new cohort of shareholders into a business that has so far been shaped by the group's long-term investment strategy.

The emotional scene at the NSE offered no formal announcement of a change in control at Reliance.

But the division of roles was telling: Mukesh Ambani watched as his children presented the business to investors, while Akash spoke directly about the responsibilities of leadership and the next half-century of value creation.

In his closing remarks, Akash thanked his parents for their guidance and said earning their trust and respect was what he and his siblings held dearest.

The listing bell marked a financial milestone for Jio. For the Ambanis, it was also a moment of inheritance made public - a father watching as the next generation gets ready to define what it would do with the enterprise he had built.