Jio Platforms, home to India's biggest telecom company, has rewritten the country's IPO history with its public offering. The Rs 30,213 crore offering was fully subscribed within 100 minutes of opening, making it the largest and fastest-ever subscribed offering.

With over 1 crore applications, it also set a global record for investor participation. The IPO, launched on October 21, was fully subscribed in less than two hours of public bidding, and remained open until October 23.

The issue is India's biggest-ever IPO and the fastest among recent mega-IPOs to achieve full subscription. The offering came from Reliance Industries-backed Jio Platforms Ltd.

What made the Jio IPO historic

The IPO broke several records on day one of the offering. Its speed of subscription and the scale of investor participation set it apart from previous large Indian offerings, making it the biggest news of the week from India even as protests continued in parts of Europe and conflicts dragged on abroad.

What an IPO is

An initial public offering is the process through which a private company sells its shares to the public for the first time, transitioning into a publicly traded entity. This allows the company to raise equity capital from public investors, and after the IPO, shares can be bought and sold on stock exchanges, enabling investors to benefit from the company's growth and market value appreciation.

IPOs have been a buzzword in the economic world for decades. The Dutch can be credited with conducting the first IPO when the Dutch East India Company, then the biggest commercial enterprise in the world, invited every resident of the Netherlands to buy shares to help finance its trade in spices and other commodities.

In India, many believe the modern IPO market began with the birth of the Securities and Exchange Board of India in 1988, which was given statutory powers in 1992. A year later, a defining moment for India's IPO history came when Pune-based software company Infosys Technologies filed for an IPO at Rs 95 per share.

What the records mean for investors

For investors, the record subscription shows the depth of demand for large Indian offerings. The issue's size, speed and participation together mark a milestone for the country's capital markets, with allotment and listing watched closely after the offer closed on October 23.