Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

For the last six months now, every Monday 7 am, Anand and I have been bringing you unique insights distilled from the unrelenting financial services and personal finance news cycle.

A lot of strange things have happened during that time—Paytm’s* valuation crashing to unimaginable levels, the RBI not hiking interest rates… and what happened on 12 March pushes the envelope even further into strange territory.

On that Saturday, Sachin Bansal’s financial services baby, Navi Technologies, took the first step towards becoming a public limited financial services company—it filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP). This, at a time when even the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is set to postpone its mega initial public offering (IPO).

There’s a lot to break down in the DRHP, and it’s certainly interesting stuff, but Navi’s financial metrics aren’t really what I’m talking about.

No, what’s strange here is the why. Because Bansal doesn’t look like he is IPO-ing for any of the usual reasons…

The unusual prospect(u)s of Sachin Bansal’s Navi

If three-year-old Navi Technologies goes public over the next few months, it will have the distinction of being among the youngest companies to enter the stock exchanges.