BENGALURU: Jio Financial Services (JFS) has been valued at around $20 billion after its stock price was set at a much higher-than-expected 261.85 rupees ($3.19) in its demerger from Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries.

The demerger, which was announced last October, is seen as oil-to-retail conglomerate Reliance's way of expanding in the lucrative financial services sector, especially as it already has a non-bank financial company licence.

At a $20 billion valuation, Jio Financial would be one of the top 40 Indian companies by market capitalisation, in a list headed by Reliance at $233 billion.

In a first, India's main stock exchanges held a special hour-long "pre-open call auction" trading session for Reliance on Thursday to determine JFS' share price.

The price was determined as 261.85 rupees, or the difference between 2,841.85 rupees, Reliance's closing price on Wednesday, and 2,580 rupees, its price at the end of the special session.

JFS's stock price is higher than analysts' estimate of 160 rupees to 190 rupees. Stockholders will get one JFS share for each Reliance share they hold.

"This shows people are quite confident about the future performance of JFS with exposure to Jio's mobile customer base. It also holds nearly 1 trillion rupees of Reliance's treasury shares. These factors have given lot of confidence to investors," said G Chokkalingam, founder and head of research at Equinomics.

"Reliance Industries will also rise significantly from here as JFS unlocking is just the beginning and there will be much more for the shareholders from growth opportunities for retail and telecom," he said.

JFS will be included in major Indian indices, including the benchmark Nifty 50, but will not trade until it is listed, the date for which Reliance will likely set at its upcoming annual general meeting.

JFS' access to vast amounts of data from Reliance's telecom and retail businesses will also help it kick-start lending, analysts have said. Macquarie Research said JFS would likely be an AAA-rated entity that could borrow at attractive rates.

Reliance Strategic Investments, the unit to be renamed JFS, late on Wednesday reported a net profit after tax of 1.45 billion rupees ($17.7 million) for April-June based on revenue of 2.15 billion rupees.

Reliance shares had surged about 8% from July 8, when it set the record date for the demerger, through Wednesday.

The stock was trading about 1.1% higher at 11.50 a.m. IST after the special session. It is up 11.6% so far this year, outpacing a 9.5% rise in the Nifty 50. ($1 = 82.0260 Indian rupees) (Additional reporting by Ira Dugal, Savio Shetty; Editing by Savio D'Souza and Jamie Freed)