Devina Mehra: Forgetting history can be costly, especially so while investing

In the last year, I noticed a pattern in the stories that people were telling about their stock picks—and in bull markets, everyone has a story. For example, in financial services, the same business of giving people loans to buy things gets packaged differently, and investors excitedly jump in every time. But ‘BNPL’ sounds fancier and, more importantly, ‘new’ and ‘innovative.’ How many remember the first round of scams in the education-technology space, topped by Educomp, headed by IIM graduates? After a decorous mourning period of a few years, once again edtech became the darling of the investors, this time more in the unlisted space, where the likes of Byju’s raised over $5 billion in spite of very well-documented holes in its business model and corporate governance. Yet, its funding rounds continued, probably fuelled by the ‘greater fool’ theory that investors would get an exit by palming off their stake to someone else, or maybe through an initial public offer.