Indians are now the world's largest consumers of mobile data
Within months of each other, two institutions that together embody India's digital awakening — Jio Platforms, which put the internet in the hands of half a billion people, and the National Stock Exchange, which now channels the savings of 200 million retail investors — are preparing to offer their shares to the world. Their combined $7.3 billion in listings are not merely financial events but a reckoning with what a decade of cheap data and mobile connectivity has wrought upon the lives of 1.4 billion people. India is asking global capital to believe in the story it has been quietly writing since 2016 — a story of transformation that is real, but whose next chapter remains unresolved.
- Two of India's most consequential institutions are simultaneously seeking public capital, creating a rare moment of convergence between the country's digital and financial revolutions.
- Foreign investors, burned by high-profile IPO disappointments like PayTM and LIC, remain wary — and a weakening rupee is doing little to rebuild their confidence.
- Jio is pivoting from a price-war disruptor to an AI and data infrastructure company, partnering with Nvidia and Meta to position itself at the center of India's technological future.
- The NSE's listing lays bare a striking social shift: retail brokerage accounts exploded from 30 million to 200 million during the pandemic, as cheap smartphones turned ordinary Indians into market participants.
- The offerings are landing in a market that has underperformed globally, leaving open the question of whether ambition and scale alone can draw foreign capital back to Indian shores.
Two of India's largest companies are preparing to list on the stock exchange within months of each other, and together they narrate how a nation of 1.4 billion people was remade by the smartphone in less than a decade.
Jio Platforms, the digital arm of Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries, is expected to raise around $4 billion at a valuation between $120 and $160 billion. The National Stock Exchange is seeking $3.3 billion for a 6 percent stake, valuing it at $57 billion. The scale is striking, but what analysts find genuinely significant is what these listings represent: the financialization of Indian household savings and the digital revolution that reshaped how the country's people live and spend.
When Jio entered India's telecom market in 2016, it found 17 competing operators and a population largely priced out of mobile data. Its strategy was simple and devastating — offer data so cheaply it was nearly free, triggering a price war that collapsed the market into a duopoly. The result was transformative. India became the world's largest consumer of mobile data, surpassing the United States and China. That connectivity unlocked digital payments, streaming, and online commerce at extraordinary scale. The Unified Payments Interface, launched the same year as Jio, processed virtually nothing in 2016; by 2025, it handled 228 billion transactions annually.
The NSE's listing reflects a parallel shift in how Indians invest. During the pandemic, millions opened brokerage accounts for the first time, drawn by cheap data and the ease of trading from a phone. Online trading accounts surged from 30 million to over 200 million. India's stock market now ranks fourth globally at $4.85 trillion in market capitalization, and the NSE sits at its center, generating revenue on every trade.
Jio, meanwhile, is repositioning itself as a digital and AI infrastructure company, partnering with Nvidia and Meta to build data centers and develop language models trained on Indian languages — a signal that it sees its next phase of growth in monetizing, not merely acquiring, its vast user base.
Yet the timing is complicated. Indian markets have underperformed globally as foreign investors withdrew in search of better returns elsewhere. The rupee has weakened. High-profile IPOs like PayTM and the Life Insurance Corporation disappointed investors, trading below their listing prices. Whether these two landmark offerings can restore foreign confidence — or whether they arrive a moment too soon — remains the defining question hanging over both deals.
Two of India's largest companies are preparing to list on the stock exchange within months of each other, and together they tell the story of how a nation of 1.4 billion people has been remade by the smartphone and the internet in less than a decade.
The National Stock Exchange, which operates the world's biggest derivatives market and ranks among the top three equity exchanges by volume, filed paperwork for an initial public offering last month. So did Jio Platforms, the digital subsidiary of Reliance Industries, the conglomerate controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani. Jio is expected to raise around $4 billion at a valuation between $120 billion and $160 billion. The NSE is seeking $3.3 billion for a 6 percent stake, valuing the exchange at $57 billion. The scale alone is striking—these are among the largest share sales India has ever seen. But what makes them genuinely significant, according to market analysts, is what they represent: the financialization of Indian household savings and the digital revolution that has reshaped how the country's people live, work, and spend money.
A decade ago, barely 200 million Indians used the internet. Today that number is approaching a billion. Jio alone accounts for 525 million of those users. When Jio entered India's telecom market in 2016, it found an industry fractured among 17 competing operators. The company's strategy was blunt: offer data so cheap it was nearly free, triggering a price war that consolidated the market into what amounts to a duopoly. The effect was transformative. Indians are now the world's largest consumers of mobile data, surpassing even the United States and China. That cheap connectivity did more than change how people communicate. It opened the door to digital payments, streaming video, online shopping, and social media use on a scale that has reshaped daily life across the country.
The numbers illustrate the speed of this shift. India's digital payment system, the United Payments Interface, launched the same year as Jio. It processed virtually no transactions in 2016. By 2025, it was handling 228 billion transactions annually. Subscriptions to streaming platforms jumped 40 percent between 2019 and 2026. The monthly data bills of ordinary Indians have tripled, growing three times faster than rural wages, according to analysis from Kotak Bank. People are spending more time on their phones, watching videos and scrolling through social media, than ever before.
The NSE's listing reflects a parallel transformation in how Indians invest. During the pandemic, millions of ordinary people opened brokerage accounts for the first time, drawn by cheap mobile data and the ease of trading from their phones. The number of online trading accounts surged from about 30 million to more than 200 million. The NSE is the backbone of India's stock market, which now ranks fourth globally by market capitalization at $4.85 trillion. Every trade executed on its platform generates revenue. Trading volumes have grown sharply, and the exchange is exceptionally profitable, though its earnings swing with market activity.
Jio, meanwhile, is repositioning itself beyond telecom. The company is now positioning itself as a digital and artificial intelligence infrastructure provider, partnering with Nvidia and Meta to build data centers and develop large language models trained on Indian languages. It is also shifting from a phase of acquiring market share to monetizing its user base through higher tariffs, increased data consumption, and upgrades to paid plans—a sign that India's consumer market is becoming more sophisticated and willing to pay for services.
Together, these two listings could signal to global investors that India's markets are maturing and offer genuine opportunities in sectors central to the country's future growth. But the timing is complicated. Indian markets have underperformed globally over the past year as foreign investors withdrew billions of dollars in search of better returns in the United States and artificial intelligence opportunities elsewhere in Asia. The Indian rupee has weakened, making the country less attractive to overseas capital. Several high-profile IPOs in recent years—PayTM and the state-owned Life Insurance Corporation among them—have disappointed investors, trading below their listing prices. Whether the NSE and Jio offerings alone can reverse that trend and bring foreign money flooding back remains an open question.
Notable Quotes
These are unique businesses which don't get built often. NSE is a direct proxy of the financialisation of Indian household savings into mutual funds and stocks, while Jio is the story of a company that single handedly ushered in a digital revolution.— Yatin Singh, CEO of Investment Banking at Emkay Global
Together, Jio and NSE represent the twin pillars of India's new economy.— Feroze Azeez, Anand Rathi Wealth Limited
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does it matter that these two companies are going public at the same moment?
Because they're not really separate stories. One is about how Indians consume—data, entertainment, payments. The other is about how they invest. Together they show a country that has moved from offline to online in a single decade.
But India has had a stock exchange for a long time. What's new about the NSE listing?
The NSE itself is old, yes. But its listing signals something different—that retail investing has become mainstream. Two hundred million trading accounts is not a niche anymore. It's a mass phenomenon, driven entirely by cheap phones and cheap data.
And Jio's role in that?
Jio made the phones and data cheap enough that ordinary people could afford to be online constantly. That same affordability that let someone in a village watch Netflix also let them open a brokerage account and buy stocks.
So these IPOs are about confidence in India's future?
They're about India's present, actually. The transformation has already happened. These listings are just the market catching up to reality—pricing companies that have already reshaped how a billion people live.
What could go wrong?
Foreign investors have been leaving India for months, chasing better returns elsewhere. The currency is weak. Some recent IPOs have flopped. These two offerings are big, but they're not magic. They can't fix those problems alone.