Mumbai: A failed attempt at uploading a college assignment back in 2009-10 because the “internet did not work” sparked the idea and conversations that became Jio, Isha Ambani said on Thursday.Addressing a press conferenc…

Mumbai: A failed attempt at uploading a college assignment back in 2009-10 because the “internet did not work” sparked the idea and conversations that became Jio, Isha Ambani said on Thursday.Addressing a press conference ahead of the Jio Platforms’ IPO – at cap price it works out to over Rs 30,200 crore, and India’s largest public market offering so far – Isha recalled that around the year 2009-10, she and her brother Akash were studying in the US and were home in Mumbai on a break. She tried to submit an assignment online, but the internet did not work.”Let me begin by telling you the story about how Jio was born. It was about 2009-2010. Akash and I were in college in the States, and we were back home in Bombay (Mumbai) for a break. And I had an assignment to submit online. I tried to submit the assignment, but unfortunately, the internet did not work, and I couldn’t submit it,” she said.Jio eyes bigger slice of $1.4 trillion digital economy, commanding over 60% of India’s wireless data trafficWhat followed were deep conversations about why should India be left behind in the digital space, she recalled.”Why was it that we didn’t have the same type of connectivity that we enjoyed in the West?’ she said.Akash, she said, referring to her twin brother and current Managing Director of Jio Platforms, firmly believed then that the answer was to create a digital technology platform company.”Akash firmly believed that the answer and solution to this was creating a digital technology platform company. In 2016, Jio launched, and here we are today in 2026,” said Isha, who is a director on the board of Jio Platforms.She described Jio’s journey as an extension of the Reliance philosophy of building businesses: ideas backed by a long-term perspective, scale that can change the economics of an industry, and execution that is “hard-coded” into the organisation.Isha also invoked her grandfather Dhirubhai Ambani, who took Reliance Industries public in 1977. For him, she said, Reliance was never just a company but a promise that every Indian should share in the country’s growth and prosperity.”Three generations later,” Isha said, she, Akash, and brother Anant Ambani remain committed to the motto “Growth is life”.Jio has set a price band of Rs 1,065 to 1,119 a share for its offer of up to 27 crore new shares, about 3 per cent of the existing capital, with no offer-for-sale component.At the top of the band, the sale would raise about Rs 30,213 crore, ahead of Hyundai Motor India’s Rs 27,870 crore share sale in October 2024.The price implies a market value of about Rs 10.3 lakh crore, short of the roughly Rs 11 lakh crore the company had earlier been said to seek.Bidding runs from October 21 to 23, with anchor investors bidding on October 19. The shares are expected to begin trading on October 28. Proceeds will go toward prepaying borrowings of Reliance Jio Infocomm, the telecom subsidiary, and general corporate purposes, according to the October 14 red herring prospectus.

Source: Deccan Herald