BETTING BIG ON LIFE

LIC’s IPO is not just about financial markets; everything from the government’s reform plans to the way ordinary Indians invest their money is at stake

- K. SUNIL THOMAS

They came from far and wide to Mumbai, filling up the vast Cooperage Football Ground in Colaba, excited like a teenage ARMY at a BTS concert. It was not a match or a concert, though; yet the man who made them go there was a rock star on his own.

It was the mid-1980s and Dhirub hai Ambani had kickstarted a stock market revolution with the initial public offering of Reliance a few years earlier, turning thousands of ordinary Indians across the country into crorepatis. And in the ‘go-bigor-go-home’ style that has encapsulated the Ambani business ethos, the annual general body meeting of the company was held in a stadium, a first, perhaps, in the world.

“I knew history was being made,” said Ramnikbhai, an early Reliance investor whose life was transformed because of that one nifty bit of investment. ₹1,000 invested in the Reliance IPO is worth more than ₹2 crore today!

Will history repeat itself and cash counters go cha-ching again, as the Life Insurance Corporation of India, India’s largest insurer, gears up for its first sale of shares? Will it, in the process, help the government avoid a debt trap? More significantly, will it change the way Indians invest, making ordinary people put their money in stock markets for the first time?

TAKING STOCK

V.R. Srinivasan, a bureaucrat based in Delhi, had stuck to safe modes of investments like fixed deposits and insurance policies all his life. The ‘riskiest’ he had ever gone was putting a small amount in a systematic investment plan. Now, just a few months ahead of his retirement, all that might change.

“Markets are unpredictable, but there is definitely value in LIC IPO,” he said. “I will apply for a minimum number of shares.”