In Mumbai this week, the richest man in Asia threw a party: DJ sets, a drone show, a jam session with popular Indian singers. The occasion was money. Jio Platforms, the telecoms and digital arm of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, had just completed the largest initial public offering in India’s history. As Yashraj Sharma reported for Al Jazeera, it raised $3.2bn.

The shares began trading on Wednesday, 28 October. According to CNBC TV18, they listed at ₹1,358 on the National Stock Exchange and the BSE, 21.36 percent above the issue price of ₹1,119, and kept rising to close near ₹1,419, almost 27 percent up. Al Jazeera put the company’s value at $131.5bn. That makes Jio the second most valuable company in the country. Only its parent, Reliance, is worth more. Investors had bid for the shares 22.19 times over during the three days of subscription.

Anant Ambani, the youngest son and an additional director on Jio’s board, spoke at the celebration:

“Jio may not be visible. But it pulses through every digital dream of India. Today, Jio is shared with India.”

Shared, perhaps, in the way a house is shared with its lodgers. Reliance remains the parent. Meta and Google, which put billions into Jio in 2020, remain major shareholders. The family remains the family.

Ambani’s world

Forbes puts Mukesh Ambani’s fortune at $80bn. He is 69, and since inheriting Reliance from his father he has carried it far beyond textiles and petrochemicals into food, clothing, fuel, the internet and streaming. In a country of more than a billion people, some say it is no exaggeration to call India “Ambani’s world”. Jio alone serves more than 530 million customers.

Foreign power has noticed. When the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, came to India in October for two days, he toured Reliance’s Jamnagar refinery complex in Gujarat, where he and Ambani discussed processing more Venezuelan oil. He did not go to New Delhi, and officials there were angered by suggestions that ministers should travel to see him.

The free months

The empire’s digital province was won in 2016. Americans were then paying about $7 for a gigabyte of mobile data on average. Jio arrived and gave data away free, for months. Long queues formed at pop-up tents in Indian cities handing out SIM cards. Jio passed 100 million subscribers in its first 170 days, at the time called the fastest any mobile operator had done it anywhere.

Generosity on that scale needs a treasury behind it. Jio’s entry required an investment commitment of nearly $22.48bn by September 2016, spent on spectrum, network infrastructure and fibre backhaul. Reliance was prepared to take early losses in return for millions of customers. Competitors cut prices hard, consumption soared and millions of Indians started using the internet on their smartphones. Within three years, Jio had more subscribers than any other operator in India. Then came JioCinema for streaming and sport, and JioCloud for storage and digital services.

Those who fell

A research paper published in ScienceDirect found that Jio’s entry cut India’s average telecom revenue per subscriber by 42.8 percent, from nearly $1.32 in 2016 to $0.75 in 2019. The researchers called the fall unprecedented, and said it left behind a highly concentrated market.

Seven of the ten incumbent operators went bankrupt or merged out of existence. Aircel went. So did Videocon, Telenor India and Tata Teleservices.

So did Reliance Communications, founded by Anil Ambani, Mukesh’s younger brother. It filed for bankruptcy in 2019. The brothers had once been joint heirs, and they spent years in a bitter feud over how to divide their father’s conglomerate after his death in 2002. In the end the price war settled what the inheritance dispute had not.

Since 2016, Mukesh Ambani’s fortune has grown nearly 3.8 times, by roughly $60bn. Jio and Airtel have grown stronger, and Vodafone Idea is still struggling financially. Together the three hold more than 92 percent of the market, an arrangement some observers call an oligopoly.

The researchers found that consumers gained from the cheap years, and that those gains shrank once the market had consolidated again. In July 2024, Jio raised prices across its plans by about 12 to 25 percent, and the other operators followed with steep increases of their own. A reflection, not a finding: for a conqueror, the first free month is the cheapest thing he ever sells.

Even Jio, in its IPO disclosures, admits there is a limit. It warned that further tariff increases may not bring in more revenue, because customers could move to cheaper plans or switch operators.

The challenger from orbit

The next frontier is the sky. Jio is considering a low-Earth-orbit satellite to deliver internet from space. That would put it up against Elon Musk’s Starlink, which has spent years seeking approval to operate in India.

Musk, the world’s richest man and a key ally of President Donald Trump, has taken the fight public. In a series of posts on X he accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of holding up Starlink to protect Jio. Scroll reported that on 9 October Musk asked whether Ambani was “the real boss” of India, and the next day asked whether “Prime Minister Ambani” would “consider allowing Starlink to compete”. He wrote that Starlink was being blocked by “oligarchs” protecting their “monopolistic chokehold” on Indians.

Reliance answered on 16 October with a statement on X that did not name Musk. It said the company has “never feared competition” and has “grown in an India that welcomes investment and innovation, homegrown or international”. According to Business Today, the company also pointed out that its own satellite service is still waiting for government clearance. Reliance said it welcomed competition in satellite communications, “including Starlink,” Onmanorama reported.

So for now the two richest men on their continents wait outside the same office for the same permit, and the Indian state decides who goes into space first.