PB Fintech To Hold Around 25% Stake In Upcoming Hospital Venture, Says Chairman
"It (PB Health Services) is not a PolicyBazaar venture. PolicyBazaar is just an investor in that venture," Yashish Dahiya said.
PB Fintech Ltd., the parent of insurance aggregator PolicyBazaar, is expected to hold up to 25% stake in the newly announced venture PB Health Services, according to its Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer Yashish Dahiya.
PB Health Services will help the company to foray into healthcare services, Dahiya said, while speaking to NDTV Profit.
The setting up of the healthcare-focused venture received nod from PB Fintech's board of directors in December 2024.
Dahiya revealed that PolicyBazaar will be a minority stakeholder in PB Health Services. “It (PB Health) is not a PolicyBazaar venture. PolicyBazaar is just an investor in that venture. It's, at best, a minority investor,” he said.
“PolicyBazaar would be perhaps a 20% to 25% stakeholder,” he added.
The top executive highlighted that right now, there is a lot of investment appetite in PB Health and PolicyBazaar is having to “fight” to have the shares.
“At this point, there is a material investment appetite that PolicyBazaar is having to fight for that share, where PolicyBazaar could well be zero when the venture would happen, but that's not to our advantage,” he noted.
He added that there is now an “over-demand” for the new venture.
“There is over-demand for the venture and of course that has to materialise into contracts and when that happens, we will let the markets know,” Dahiya said.
This is happening largely because the company now has “sound data” that the venture is already benefitting PolicyBazaar.
Dahiya gave an example of PolicyBazaar’s insurance agents using PB Health Services as leverage to close deals with customers.
“This communication is already happening, and I am pretty sure the reason a salesperson makes a communication is because it benefits him in closing a sale. Otherwise, why would they make that communication,” he noted.
“So, I am very confident now that it is already benefiting us,” the PB Fintech chairman added. He reaffirmed that the company will be able to grow an extra 5% due to the new venture.
“I had said (in our last concall) that we should be able to grow at least 5% extra over the next 10 years because of this venture… We are definitely growing more than 5% faster at present because of just the expectation of the venture, not the actual venture happening,” he said.
Shares of PB Fintech on Thursday closed 4.1% higher at Rs 2,205.35 apiece on the BSE, compared to a 1.83% climb in the benchmark Sensex.
