Jio IPO: Nithin Kamath credits cheap data for Zerodha’s rise

Zerodha chief executive Nithin Kamath has credited Reliance Jio and Airtel with providing the affordable internet access that helped his brokerage and other digital businesses expand. Economic Times Markets reported his comments on X on October 21, as Jio Platforms opened public subscription for a ₹30,213 crore initial public offering.

Kamath placed low-cost mobile data alongside Aadhaar and the Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, as infrastructure central to Zerodha’s growth. His assessment was not a recommendation to subscribe to the Jio IPO: he explicitly separated his appreciation of the company’s contribution from an investment decision.

Connectivity behind the retail-investing expansion

Reflecting on Jio’s decade-long journey, Kamath argued that its significance extended beyond its own scale. By bringing millions of people online, Jio and Airtel helped create conditions in which internet-first businesses could reach a much larger customer base.

He linked that connectivity, together with digital identity and payments infrastructure, to the expansion of Indian capital markets after COVID-19. According to the figures he cited, India had roughly 2 crore unique investors in 2016, compared with more than 13 crore now. These are Kamath’s cited figures; they do not establish how much of the increase can be attributed to any individual company.

Kamath also recalled appearing alongside Mukesh Ambani in a 2015 business-watch list for the following year. Ambani ranked first and Kamath sixth, with Zerodha’s decision to remove delivery brokerage charges helping draw attention to the younger firm. He said the comparison had felt intimidating given Reliance’s vastly greater scale.

His broader point was that a business’s success often rests partly on infrastructure developed by others. He welcomed the prospect of the capital markets that Jio had helped broaden now providing capital to the company itself.

The reported IPO terms

The offering is reported to run from October 21 to October 23, with a price band of ₹1,065–₹1,119 a share. At the upper end, the reported valuation sought by Jio Platforms is ₹10.3 lakh crore.

The company reportedly raised ₹8,110 crore through its anchor allocation on Monday, with LIC, BlackRock and Fidelity among the participating institutions.

The report also cited an approximately 22% grey-market premium. That is an unofficial market indication, not an assured listing return. Kamath’s comments about the benefits of digital infrastructure should likewise not be read as an assessment of the IPO’s valuation or likely performance.