What Should the Retail Investor Note About LIC's Mega IPO?

LIC is now a step closer to becoming one of the largest companies in India, with the government selling a five percent stake in the insurance giant for the first time in an upcoming IPO.

The household insurer name on 13 February filed its draft red herring prospectus or DRHP with markets regulator SEBI, which states that it will be offering 31.62 crore in equity or 5 percent of the company to the Indian market in its upcoming IPO.

This move is in line with the Centre’s disinvestment plan to fill its coffers drained by the pandemic. It was also mentioned in the recent budget speech by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

Now, LIC is India’s biggest life insurer. Here are a few numbers to support that statement—286 million policies, 115,000 employees, 1.34 million individual agents and more than 2000 branches. It is one of the top 5 global insurers and controls 64.1% market share in India.

Its IPO is set to be the biggest in Indian stock market history, dwarfing the record of $2.4 billion set by Paytm last year. Though the valuation has not been inked yet, analysts have pegged it anywhere between Rs 5.4-8 lakh crore.

But as the company prepares to go public, it leaves a few questions unanswered for investors such as—how is this going to affect policy holders? What is the insurer's profitability plan? And is it worth investing?

To discuss this, we spoke to Madhavan Narayanan, a senior journalist and Prosenjit Datta, former editor of Businessworld and Business Today. Tune in!

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