Jupiter IPO Set for Mid-2027 as Solar Cell Maker Eyes Rs 6,500 Cr

A listing plan that keeps moving

Jupiter International, the Kolkata-based solar cell maker, now says it will go public by the middle of 2027. It is talking to merchant bankers and expects to settle the details of the offering in about a month.3 The company says the money will pay for its next round of expansion in FY28 and FY29, meant to strengthen its core cell business and take it into upstream solar components and battery storage.35

The new guidance comes with a bold forecast. Chief executive Dhruv Sharma expects revenue to reach Rs 6,500 crore in FY28. That would be more than double the Rs 3,000–3,200 crore projected for the current year, and up from about Rs 950 crore last year.3

Read on its own, this looks like a confident growth company heading for a listing. The paper trail tells a different story: the IPO date has slipped more than once. In February 2025, Jupiter was reported to be planning an IPO of about $300 million (roughly Rs 2,600 crore), mostly new shares with a small offer for sale. In March 2026, it was reported to have hired IIFL, Axis Capital, Nomura and ICICI Securities, with draft papers expected in May.6 As of late 2025, one unlisted-share platform noted that no IPO date, price band or issue structure had been confirmed.10

In July 2026, Sharma said the company aimed to list in the first quarter of calendar 2027, subject to regulatory approvals.2 He also told another paper that the plans were still being discussed and would be finalised in a couple of months.8 Now the target is mid-2027 and the decision is again a month away.3 On this record, the IPO is a goal Jupiter is serious about, but the date has been pushed back at least once and should not be treated as fixed.

Why the delay may be deliberate

The slip probably has more to do with strategy than trouble. Jupiter's numbers are about to change sharply. A new 3 GW TopCon cell factory in Nagpur is due to start up between December 2026 and March 2027, taking total cell capacity to about 7.5 GW.2 Three plants that came online between January and July 2026 will add close to a full year of output to this year's results.2

For a company growing this fast, timing matters a lot. A share sale in early 2027 would be priced mostly on forecasts. A share sale in mid-2027, after the Nagpur plant is running and a full year of higher revenue is on the books, gives investors real results and gives the company a better case for a high price. This is an inference, not something the company has said. But it fits the step-by-step capacity schedule Jupiter has laid out, and its stated aim of funding FY28–FY29 spending rather than the current build-out.35

What investors would be buying

Jupiter's pitch is that it focuses on solar cells only. It has made cells since 2008–09 and has chosen not to move into module assembly. Sharma argues that cells need more technology and more capital than modules, so focusing on one step lets management concentrate on efficiency and quality.3 Its customers include large module makers such as Waaree Energies, Premier Energies and Adani group companies.3

That was not always the plan. In January 2025, Jupiter announced a Rs 6,500 crore, three-year investment to become fully integrated across wafers, cells and modules, including 6 GW of module capacity.6 Module assembly has since been dropped. Wafers remain part of the plan, and battery storage has been added.3 The change makes sense. In Sharma's figures, India has about 250 GW of registered module capacity but only about 37 GW of cell capacity.3 With that gap, a company that sells cells to everyone can sell into a crowded module market without competing in it.

Policy helps. One analysis points to high customs duties on imported cells, production-linked incentives, and ALMM List-II, a rule effective 1 June 2026 that requires covered projects to use domestically approved cells. That rule guarantees demand for Indian cell makers already on the approved list, and Jupiter is one of them.10 For investors this cuts both ways. Strong protection supports today's margins, but the investment case depends on those rules staying in place.10

Reports disagree on the numbers

Reports do not agree on several basic figures, and investors should watch for them in the offer document. Capacity is one. July reports put Jupiter at about 4.5 GW across four plants in Himachal Pradesh and a joint-venture unit in Odisha.28 The October report says about 5.4 GW.3 Even so, both versions say total capacity will reach 7.5 GW once Nagpur is running, so the numbers do not quite add up.23

The wafer plan has been described in three different ways. One account describes a 5 GW ingot and wafer plant in Nagpur, built over 20 months as part of a roughly Rs 3,000 crore expansion.24 Another describes a Rs 3,000 crore plant with 3 GW of annual capacity.89 The latest version is a 2 GW first phase within a year, growing to 10 GW, timed ahead of quality-control rules for wafers and ingots expected from 2028.3 Last year's revenue is given as about Rs 975 crore in some reports and Rs 950 crore in others.23 The length of customer contracts is also unclear: one report says annual, another says multi-year.35 Contract length matters a great deal when judging how reliable revenue will be.

The private funding history is also unclear. One report says ValueQuest's SCALE fund led a Rs 300 crore round in 2024. Another puts the ValueQuest investment at Rs 500 crore and mentions earlier money from the Edelweiss Group in 2022.6 The final prospectus should settle these questions. Until then, any valuation is guesswork.

Valuation: growth now, margins later

Jupiter has not given a valuation target, and no price band has been announced.10 The most recent reported size of the raise is still about $300 million, mostly new shares.6 That is a large amount for a company that earned under Rs 1,000 crore in revenue last year. It reflects investment plans much larger than the business today.3

Profitability will drive the valuation, and it is also where the most caution is needed. In FY24, Jupiter had revenue of Rs 579 crore and a Rs 41 crore profit, after a loss the year before. One unlisted-market analysis puts FY25 operating margin at about 41%. It calls that well above industry norms and unlikely to last.10 The same analysis says revenue grew unevenly: Rs 430 crore in FY23, Rs 578 crore in FY24, a small dip to Rs 556 crore in FY25, then about Rs 975 crore in FY26.10 Sharma has stressed that the company is already profitable and argues it now has the management depth to accept money from retail investors.2

The main question for the IPO is whether Jupiter can keep those margins while growing several times over. Commentators point to the same risks: whether Nagpur is finished on time, debt from a roughly Rs 3,000 crore spending programme, price pressure from Chinese imports, and the steady spending needed to keep up as cell technology moves from Mono PERC to TopCon and newer designs.110 Sharma himself has said that, across the industry, carrying out projects has been harder than designing the incentive schemes.3 That remark applies to his own company too.

The storage bet and the US option

Two newer plans broaden the story but add risk. Jupiter plans to start a 5 GW battery storage and energy-management plant in July 2027, around the same time as the planned IPO, and later make battery cells.3 Sharma frames storage as the answer to solar's biggest weakness: it does not generate power around the clock.23 Separately, he has called the US market "clearly in our sight" and said Jupiter could enter it with a local partner.2

In short, Jupiter will likely come to market as one of the few independent Indian cell makers that already has approval and long experience, at a time when the government is pushing to build every step of the solar supply chain at home.39 The FY28 revenue target and the mid-2027 date both depend on Nagpur arriving on time. The company has already pushed its IPO back once. Investors should base their view on the prospectus figures, not on the forecasts.