Why is FabIndia rushing its public offer?

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Editor's note: William Nanda Bissell must be one confident entrepreneur. His company, ethnic wear and lifestyle retailer Fabindia, just announced a public issue of shares to raise Rs 4,000 crore. Most of the shares in the issue will be sold by Bissell, his family and other existing shareholders, with just a fraction constituting new shares, the proceeds of which will go to benefit the company. Nothing amiss about that except Fabindia has had one of its worst years financially in 2020-21 and reported losses in the first six months of the current financial year as well. While it is the season for loss-making startups to go public, Fabindia is anything but such a company.  It’s got a legacy of over six decades and has witnessed rapid growth until 2019-20, when the pandemic threw a spanner in the works. One would think Bissell would have waited for a better time to take his company public as his shares would have fetched better value when operations were profitable again. Especially, since the company doesn’t need the money right away. Yet, the company has filed …