From Dhirubhai to Akash Ambani, Reliance made stocks popular with Indians

Akash Ambani’s Jio Platforms is entering the stock market at a moment when India’s equity culture looks very different from the one his grandfather Dhirubhai Ambani encountered in 1977. Reliance Textile Industries’ first public issue raised about Rs 2.8 crore, but it attracted 58,000 shareholders and was oversubscribed seven times.

Nearly half a century later, Jio's Rs 30,213-crore IPO has become India’s biggest public offering. It was fully subscribed today within two hours of opening. The scale has changed dramatically, but the Ambani family is still making a case for ordinary investors to participate in the growth of its businesses. Whether Jio can recreate Dhirubhai Ambani’s legacy, however, would depend on more than the success of a single IPO.

Also Read| Jio IPO beyond telecom: Why the Ambanis are pitching AI, cloud and 7,220 patents as Jio’s tech future

The man who took the stock market to the masses

When Dhirubhai took Reliance public in 1977, the stock market was hardly a household obsession. Physical share certificates were the norm and investing involved paperwork, brokers and patience. Many Indians preferred bank deposits, gold and property to an asset they barely understood.

Dhirubhai saw an opportunity. Reliance needed capital to expand, and he was willing to raise it from thousands of small investors rather than depend entirely on banks and traditional financiers. Shares were priced at Rs 10 each. The issue raised about Rs 2.8 crore and left Reliance with 58,000 shareholders in its first year as a listed company.

The more striking numbers came later. Between 1980 and 1985, the number of retail investors in India reportedly increased from one million to four million, and nearly one in four of them owned Reliance shares.

That was a remarkable concentration for a single company. Reliance was not simply selling shares but was helping create a class of Indians who thought of themselves as shareholders.

Reliance AGMs turned into mass spectacles

The scale of that relationship was visible at Reliance’s annual general meetings. By 1985, a conventional meeting hall could no longer accommodate the crowd. Reliance hired Mumbai’s Cooperage Football Grounds for its AGM. Around 12,000 shareholders turned up, sitting beneath canvas awnings and watching the proceedings on television monitors. It was a landmark in the history of Indian corporate meetings.

Dhirubhai used the occasion to make a point about shareholder loyalty. With Swraj Paul’s takeover attempts against DCM and Escorts still fresh in the market’s memory, he told the gathering that anyone attempting a similar move against Reliance would have to contend with 1.2 million loyal shareholders. In less than a decade, the company had built a shareholder following far larger than the 58,000 investors who had joined its first public issue.

The meeting also marked a change in the company’s ambitions. Reliance dropped “Textile” from its name, indicating its move beyond fabrics into a wider industrial business.

The AGMs became known for surprise announcements, including bonus issues and other shareholder-friendly proposals. For Dhirubhai, the shareholder was not just a name on a register. The public meeting made that relationship visible, and it helped turn investing in Reliance into a social phenomenon.

A stock that became a household asset

Reliance’s appeal rested on more than the spectacle of its AGMs. Investors saw the company expand from textiles into petrochemicals and other capital-intensive industries. Its repeated public fund-raising, including through convertible debentures, kept the relationship with the market alive after the 1977 IPO.

The company’s long-term returns became part of its mythology. Reuters reported in October 2026 that Reliance’s shares had risen roughly 330-fold since 1990. Reliance’s experience was not a guarantee that every listed company would create comparable wealth. Still, the stock gave generations of investors a tangible example of what long-term equity ownership could do.

Reliance proved that a company financed partly by ordinary investors could grow into one of India’s largest businesses.

Reliance Petroleum and the next wave

The enthusiasm did not end with Dhirubhai’s generation. Reliance Petroleum’s 2006 IPO attracted more than 21 lakh applications and was subscribed 51.22 times. Its retail portion alone was subscribed nearly 15 times.

By then, Reliance had become a familiar name for investors considering a public issue. The brand carried its own weight, and investors had decades of corporate history to draw upon. The 2006 issue showed that Reliance-linked public offerings could still command extraordinary demand long after the original founder’s first IPO.

But the market was also changing. Dematerialisation, introduced through the National Securities Depository in 1996, replaced paper certificates with electronic holdings. ASBA allowed IPO applicants to keep their money in their bank accounts until allotment. UPI later made applications possible through a phone. The time between an issue closing and listing has also shortened.

CDSL and NSDL together hold more than 23 crore demat accounts, compared with 2.69 crore accounts in 2016. The figure may overstate the number of individual investors because one person can hold multiple accounts, but it captures the scale of the market’s expansion. Of course, policies, reforms and technology made participation of common people in equity markets easier, but Reliance had helped create the appetite.

Jio’s IPO: A new chapter, not a repeat of 1977

Jio Platforms is approaching the market with a very different proposition. The company has more than 500 million telecom subscribers and has changed the economics of mobile internet in India since its 2016 launch. Its low-cost data and free voice strategy took market share from rivals and helped make mobile internet a mass-market service.

The IPO seeks to raise Rs 30,213 crore at a valuation of up to $108.3 billion. The issue was fully subscribed within two hours on October 21, although institutional investors were much quicker to bid than retail applicants at that point. The institutional portion had received bids for 3.92 times its quota, while retail applications stood at 0.35 times the quota. So, the headline subscription figure should not be mistaken for an immediate rush from small investors.

The offering also marks Reliance’s first IPO since 2006. Akash Ambani is leading a business that has moved beyond connectivity into broadband, enterprise services, cloud and digital applications. The family’s ambition is to make Jio a technology platform rather than simply a telecom operator.

Also Read| Rs 30,213 crore, 100 minutes, Rs 2.5 lakh crore: How Jio IPO broke 3 records even before listing

The valuation question

Surely, there are reasons for optimism about the IPO. Jio has scale, a large subscriber base and the backing of Meta and Google. Analysts have argued that the IPO valuation leaves room for a strong debut. The company could also increase revenue per user through tariff changes and expand into higher-margin digital services. Data centres and satellite communications are longer-term opportunities.

But the investment case has risks too. More than 90% of Jio’s revenue still comes from telecom and, according to analysts, the company must show that its digital ambitions can translate into sustained earnings growth. Subscriber growth is also becoming harder as India’s telecom market matures, putting greater weight on tariff increases and monetisation.

Reuters argued earlier in October that the proposed valuation was below the levels previously expected, reflecting market volatility and a less forgiving environment for technology-related companies. That may make the offer more attractive than it would have been at a higher price, but it does not make the shares cheap by definition.

Investors will need to weigh Jio’s growth potential against its capital requirements, competition and the price they are being asked to pay. A heavily subscribed IPO can still produce weak long-term returns if earnings fail to catch up with expectations.

What Dhirubhai’s legacy means for Akash

Dhirubhai’s achievement was not merely taking Reliance to market in 1977, but the company built a continuing relationship with ordinary shareholders, kept returning to the market for capital and gave investors a visible stake in its industrial expansion. The packed AGMs, the millions of shareholders and the stock’s long-term performance helped make equity ownership aspirational for a much wider section of India.

Akash Ambani inherits that legacy in a market where access is easier, but investor expectations are far more demanding. Jio’s IPO may bring another wave of households into the market, but the lasting test will come after listing, when investors judge the company on earnings and returns rather than its brand or subscription numbers.

In 1977, Reliance helped persuade ordinary Indians to become shareholders, but in 2026, Jio must persuade them that owning a piece of India’s digital future is worth the price.