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Context is everything.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Star is set to become the first standalone health insurance company in India to go public. Will its valuation and a resurgent pandemic spoil the party?
Editor's note: Star Health and Allied Insurance’s initial public offer of shares should have been among the highlights of this year’s unending public listing frenzy. After all, at Rs 7,249 crore, it is the third largest in terms of size this year, behind only those of Paytm and Zomato. Yet, Star Health’s draft red herring prospectus, filed ahead of its public issue of shares, has escaped public scrutiny. Unlike the frenzy in the run-up to Paytm and Zomato’s IPOs, Star Health hasn’t attracted any newspaper headlines that deliver verdicts on its draft prospectus or lengthy Twitter threads by analysts dissecting every aspect of its business model. Nothing by way of recommendations for retail investors on YouTube or Instagram as well. Puzzling, given this is a company with a track record of profitability in a sector that is destined to grow. For starters, this is the first standalone health insurer to go public in India. It comes amid fears of a resurgence of the pandemic. And, it precedes the mega-IPO of government-owned Life Insurance Corp. of India, speculated to come up early next …
While the filing for an IPO by its telecom and digital business was the highlight, Reliance laid out plans for its new energy and retail businesses, setting them up for eventual listings.
As India’s largest stock exchange heads to the public markets, it may need to rethink its excessive reliance on transaction revenue.
As growth in equities cools, asset managers are looking to embed themselves in payrolls, payments, and credit. This raises their influence, but also the stakes.
