Bitget Lists Jio Pre-IPO Perpetual Futures

Bitget has opened a derivatives market tied to Jio Platforms ahead of the Indian company's initial public offering. CEO Gracy Chen said on October 15 that JIOUSDT pre-IPO perpetuals were live, following an October 14 announcement from the exchange's TradFi account. Jio's public share offering is scheduled for October 21-23, according to a Reliance Industries filing.

Chen described the contract as the first India-grade pre-IPO perpetual on a global exchange. That description is Bitget's claim about its product's market position.

The earlier Bitget TradFi post named Jio Platforms, identified its backing by Reliance Industries and advertised 20x trading. Contract holders receive no Jio share ownership or voting rights, as MarketSpeaker reported in its review of Bitget's product terms.

The JIOUSDT contract

Bitget's public contract record, checked at 10:17 UTC on October 15, listed JIOUSDT as a perpetual with normal trading status. It specified USDT as the quote currency and supported margin asset, with a 20x trading maximum. The same record set a minimum order value of 5 USDT and a price increment of 0.001 USDT.

The record also listed a maker fee of 0.02% and a taker fee of 0.06%. Its funding interval was eight hours, matching the schedule in MarketSpeaker's account of the listing notice. MarketSpeaker reported that Bitget can change its margin requirements and the 20x ceiling as market conditions change.

MarketSpeaker's review of Bitget's pre-IPO rules says the contracts have no expiry date and use a funding mechanism. Before the stock lists, the index draws on futures-market data. Once the stock has listed and its price has stabilized, Bitget can move to a reference based on stock-market prices.

That review also reported that Bitget's Jio announcement uses an estimated 9.21 billion shares as a valuation reference, while warning that the actual number may differ. A company valuation calculated using that estimate therefore depends on the assumed share count. It is separate from the offer price and share issuance approved by Jio's board committee.

Neither Chen's launch post nor the TradFi announcement sets out a country-by-country eligibility list. The publicly accessible contract record supplies market specifications, without establishing which customers are permitted to trade it.

Jio's share offering

Reliance's October 14 exchange disclosure says its subsidiary Jio Platforms filed a red herring prospectus that day for a fresh issue of up to 270 million equity shares. The disclosure follows a draft prospectus filed on June 19 and an August 28 notification that Jio had received SEBI's observation letter. It schedules anchor-investor bidding for October 19, ahead of the public subscription period.

The filing also reserves shares worth up to 5 billion rupees for eligible employees and up to 25 billion rupees for eligible Reliance shareholders. The shareholder reservation covers qualifying individuals and Hindu undivided families holding Reliance shares as of October 14.

In a second filing on October 14, Reliance said Jio's IPO committee approved a price range of 1,065 to 1,119 rupees per share. Bids start at 12 shares and must increase in multiples of 12. Eligible employees bidding under the reserved employee portion receive a discount of 54 rupees per share. Those rupee-denominated terms apply to the equity offering, separate from Bitget's USDT-denominated market.

CNBC reported on October 15 that the offering could raise about 302 billion rupees, or $3.2 billion, and value Jio at approximately $108 billion at the top of the price range. It also reported that Meta and Google would not sell their stakes in the offering, citing the IPO papers. The planned fresh issuance raises capital for Jio; it is not a sale of those investors' existing holdings.

The business behind the offering includes mobile connectivity, fixed broadband and cloud services. TechCrunch's October 14 report put Jio's subscriber base above 524 million as of March 31. It reported revenue of 391.7 billion rupees for the quarter ended June, nearly 12% higher than a year earlier, citing the prospectus.

Jio plans to use up to 275 billion rupees from the IPO to repay debt at Reliance Jio Infocomm, its telecom subsidiary, with the balance allocated to general corporate purposes, TechCrunch reported from the prospectus.