True North May Consider Listing Health Insurance Business After Three Years 

True North Managers LLP may consider listing its newly acquired health insurance joint venture with U.K.-based Bupa Finance Plc after over three years.

That’s the word coming from Divya Sehgal, partner—financial services and technology—at the Indian private equity fund. “There is no health insurance (company) listed. There are a few others, larger than us, some of them may also be coming before that to list,” he said in an interaction with BloombergQuint. “I think we may get to that decision in another three to four years or so.”

The fund bought Max India Ltd.’s entire 51 percent stake in Max Bupa Health Insurance Co. Ltd. for Rs 511 crore on Feb. 26. “If one can build an outstanding brand name which is trusted by the consumer, there is a huge value proposition,” said Sehgal. "Both our investments on the provider (hospitals) side and now in health insurance is towards that goal.”

Betting On Stressed Assets

While the fund focuses on four sectors—financial services, consumer, healthcare and technology—it's also eyeing the stressed assets space for investments, to pursue selective deals. “We're not likely to go after power and road and those kinds of pure infrastructure assets.”

The investment from the sixth fund, for which True North is raising capital, will either be in distressed cement, auto components or consumer companies.

Opportunities Of Interest

After health insurance, the fund continues to evaluate opportunities in the general and life insurance sector. Mid-sized players ranked between four to 15 within the market with ‘the ability to go up the pecking order’ will be the preferred picks, according to Sehgal.

Besides insurance, investments may also happen in mutual funds, financial services infrastructure and fintech companies. “We would be willing to consider inorganic opportunities for our existing platforms or new investments for True North if there are some specialised opportunities on the lending side too,” he said. “On the technology front, the fund is also keen to invest in mid-tier digitally-led IT services firms.”