Jio Platforms and Paras Healthcare IPOs draw contrasting investor demand

Reliance Jio Platforms and Paras Healthcare witnessed very different levels of investor demand during their public issues that opened on 21 October and concluded on 23 October, with share allotment scheduled for 26 October.

Jio Platforms IPO

Jio Platforms attracted bids worth more than ₹7.4 lakh crore across its public issue and anchor placement, receiving nearly 1.39 crore applications. The digital services company's IPO was subscribed 22.19 times, with investors bidding for 438.3 crore shares against 19.75 crore shares on offer by 7 PM on Friday. Public issue bids alone exceeded ₹4.9 lakh crore, while retail demand crossed ₹25,867 crore. Qualified institutional buyers led this response by subscribing 70.55 times, with domestic financial institutions, insurers, and foreign institutional investors placing heavy bids. Non-institutional investors subscribed 14 times, retail individual investors 2.72 times, the shareholder reservation category 7.60 times, and the employee portion 2.93 times. This offering is a completely new issue of 27 crore shares. At the upper end of its price band, it will raise about ₹30,213 crore and reach a valuation of roughly $108 billion. Neither parent firm Reliance Industries nor any existing shareholders are selling shares in this offering. The grey market premium for Jio Platforms stood at ₹250, pointing to an estimated listing price of ₹1,369 per share and a potential gain of 22.34% over the ₹1,119 issue price.

Paras Healthcare IPO

Paras Healthcare, which runs hospitals under the Paras Health brand, closed its public issue with a modest overall subscription of 2.23 times. Investors bid for 2,69,43,714 shares against 1,20,83,331 shares on offer. Institutional demand was much lower, as qualified institutional buyers subscribed 3.09 times and retail investors subscribed 2 times their reserved portion. The non-institutional investor category received bids for only 66% of its shares, leaving it undersubscribed. The company raised ₹652.5 crore from anchor investors like the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, BlackRock, and Eastspring Investments. The IPO includes a fresh share issue of ₹500 crore and an offer for sale of ₹950 crore by promoter Dharminder Kumar Nagar and investor Commelina Ltd, which brought the total issue size down from ₹1,800 crore. Its grey market premium stood at ₹12, suggesting a potential listing price of ₹705 per share and a 1.73% gain over the ₹693 issue price.

Context

Initial public offerings allow private companies to raise money from the public by selling shares on stock exchanges for the first time. The grey market premium is an unofficial indicator of how a stock might perform upon listing, but it does not guarantee actual market results.