In May 2006, when Venkatasamy Jagannathan began Star Health and Allied Insurance Company (Star Health), he and his 12 workers have been sitting in a dingy room on Madha Church Road in Chennai with a month-to-month hire of about Rs 30,000. On Saturday, when he resigned because the non-executive chairman and director, the market capitalisation of Star Health was near Rs 30,100 crore with over 14,000 workers, scripting an unparalleled progress story for the nation’s first standalone medical insurance firm.

For the 79-year-old business veteran, this isn’t the primary retirement in his 53-year stellar profession. Before Star Health, he had scripted an actual turnaround saga with state-run United India Insurance Company (United India). When he took over as chairman and managing director (CMD) of United India in 2001, the corporate was ratcheting up losses of Rs 50 lakh. When he retired in October 2004, it chalked up a revenue of over Rs 400 crore.

Ensconced in his house in Poes Garden, Jagannathan turns philosophical when requested about his future and of Star Health’s.

“For men may come and men may go, but our company will go forever,” he says, borrowing the strains from Lord Tennyson’s The Brook to imply that this was the idea he infused into his workers at United India and at Star Health.

Jagannathan began his profession at Hercules Insurance Company on June 3, 1970, and have become an administrative officer with United India throughout Nationalisation. In his sure-footed pursuit of success, he slowly climbed up the rungs of the ladder to develop into CMD of the corporate in the future.

It was after his retirement that he joined ETA Star Group to begin Star Health.

“In the public sector, we had an established office. Here, I had to start from A to Z. We entered health because I thought the middle-income group needed financial wherewithal,” he says.

To lower your expenses, he needed to lease typewriters. For the primary two years, individuals seemed on the enterprise with trepidation of failure. However, getting two authorities medical insurance programmes, first in Andhra Pradesh after which in Tamil Nadu, turned out to be a recreation changer for the corporate, following which individuals began reposing belief in Star Health.

The firm created a staff of docs to look into each trivialities of each invoice. Today, it has 400 docs and is credited with having one of many largest medical insurance hospital networks in India, encompassing 13,000 hospitals.

Jagannathan recollects how he ensured department managers have been employed from their respective areas and the way the founder would discipline buyer calls, usually at midnight.

When requested concerning the highest level of his profession, Jagannathan calls consideration to the corporate’s 2022–23 efficiency. The firm clocked a revenue of Rs 618 crore and an underwriting revenue of Rs 204 crore, serving to him to hold up his boots and put up the highest-ever revenue and the most effective business numbers.

Looking on the Star Health numbers, almost 39 per cent of its income was derived from South India, 23 per cent from West India, 30 per cent from North India, and eight per cent from East India.

When requested about East India’s decrease share, he says the insurance-conservative East market is likely one of the fast-evolving areas that the brand new leaders should faucet into.

Jagannathan is credited with beginning lunch for Star Health workers and even providing worker inventory possession plans (ESOPS) on the department supervisor degree, going towards the grain of corporations proscribing ESOPs to senior-level executives solely.

“A leader must know his men. A General must know his soldiers,” he provides, as a hark again to Sun Tzu.

Although he resigned from the put up of CMD in May this 12 months, he continued as non-executive chairman and director. However, the business veteran is holding his playing cards near his chest so far as retirement plans go, saying he’s weighing up all fields for his comeback.

“Every beginning has an end and every end has a new beginning. I am also searching,” he indicators off sagely.