Looking at the manner in which Reliance Industries has been going about trying to reduce the debt on its books, it could be a countdown to an eventual listing of Jio, the technology subsidiary of Reliance, Saurabh Mukherjea of Marcellus Investment Managers told CNBC-TV18 in an interview.

"Given how clear the chairman (Mukesh Ambani) has been about deleveraging the balance sheet, this looks very much like putting a pre-IPO (initial public offering) valuation imprint on it," Mukherjea said.

Reliance Industries today said that private equity firm Silver Lake will invest Rs 5,655.75 crore in Reliance Jio Platforms, giving the technology subsidiary an equity value of Rs 4.9 lakh crore. This value represent's 52 percent of Reliance Industries's market capitalisation.

The week before last Facebook said it will invest Rs 43,574 crore in Jio Platforms for a 9.99 percent stake.

"I think we could be heading for a public market action here. If so, that will be very big news for the IPO market," Mukherjea said.

"IPO of this scale and this prestige could crack open the public markets for a lot of other people and not just Reliance," he said.

Disclosure:

RIL, the promoter of Reliance Jio, also controls Network18, the parent company of CNBCTV18.com.

First Published:May 4, 2020 10:47 AM IST