MUMBAI -- Shares in Jio Platforms, India's largest telecom company, opened trading 21.4% higher than the initial public offering price in their public debut on Wednesday, marking the culmination of a decade-long venture by former parent Reliance Industries to build a connectivity giant and diversify away from oil refining revenues.

The company started trading on the National Stock Exchange at 1,358 rupees ($14.27) a piece, against the top end of 1,119 rupees per share in the IPO price band. The benchmark Nifty 50 index, which has performed poorly so far this year, was down 0.5% in early trading.

The IPO price had given Jio Platforms a market valuation of 10.3 trillion rupees, already placing it among the top five public companies in India by that metric, which includes Reliance, peer Bharti Airtel and private banking giant HDFC. Still, that valuation was down from expectations of well over 12 trillion rupees reported earlier this year.

"My dream is that one day when the world counts its great technology companies, one of them will be from India, and that company will be called Jio Platforms," Akash Ambani, managing director of Jio Platforms and the eldest son of Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani, said during the listing ceremony on Wednesday. "We will keep building and innovating until that dream comes true," he added.

Last week, the 302.1 billion rupee IPO, India's largest ever, broke the record for the highest number of bids ever received for an IPO, totaling well over 7 trillion rupees. The first public offering by a Reliance group company in two decades was also fully subscribed less than two hours after kick-off.

Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, BlackRock, Fidelity and BNP Paribas, as well as local giants like the Life Insurance Corp. and HDFC Bank, were among the anchor investors in the IPO.

The company only issued fresh shares in the IPO, with major shareholders like Meta, Google and the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, each with stakes worth billions of rupees, refraining from selling any of their shares. Up to 275 billion rupees worth of IPO proceeds are expected to be used to repay the company's net debt.

The company reported a 9.1% year-on-year increase in consolidated net profit to 77.65 billion rupees for the quarter through June 30, while revenue grew 12.6% year on year to 401.98 billion rupees during the same period.

After its launch in 2016, Jio Platforms aggressively undercut competitors in India's tightly regulated telecom sector, offering free phone calls and messaging services while dramatically bringing down internet costs. That eventually transformed the country into one of the cheapest and highest-usage internet markets in the world.

With over half a billion subscribers, Jio dominates the telecom market in India, though it trails smaller rival Airtel when it comes to revenue earned per user.

Jio is now trying to pitch itself as a tech company as it works to integrate artificial intelligence into its services and plans the development of a low Earth orbit satellite constellation, similar to Elon Musk's Starlink. For its part, Reliance has partnered with Meta on the development of AI data centers as it seeks to offset geopolitical risks to its core oil refinery business, while continuing to build out its consumer retail footprint.

The mega-listing has added to excitement around a resurgent primary market, following the 225.6 billion rupee listing of the National Stock Exchange of India last month. The upturn in sentiment comes after a dull first half of the calendar year, when domestic equity markets were bogged down by the energy price shock from the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

In the six months from April through September, 78 companies raised 942 billion rupees through IPOs on India's main bourses. That was the highest ever such haul for the first half of the Indian fiscal year, which runs through March, according to a report by market data company Prime Database.