The rise and fall of Rita Singh: A cautionary tale of 1990s Indian capitalism

livemint.com:

₹1,000-crore empire that expanded beyond Mesco shoes to encompass aviation, shipping, pharma, and that darling of the age, financial services, which could hide a multitude of sins. Success eluded her in many of these fields. Also read | Heat relief: Let street vendors and labourers guide action plans But in the first few years after liberalisation, there were always gullible investors – in a market that lacked any real supervision – who could be relied on to bail out a failing entrepreneur.

Between 1992 and 1996, nearly 4,000 public issues hit the market, raising about ₹60,000 crore for the promoters. Tragically, 80% of these companies vanished. Mesco was no different.

Between 1992 and 1995, the group zipped through six public issues through three different companies to mop up ₹177 crore. When it was all done and dusted, its share price cratered from ₹180 in 1995 to ₹3 just three years later. Mesco’s failings were not just financial, and left people gaping at the in-your-face insouciance.

Rita Singh could sell with such confidence that the product was just an afterthought. According to a report in Business Standard in February 1996, ghazal king Pankaj Udhas was asked by the group to inaugurate the blast furnace at its steel plant. About 500 people were in attendance, including chief minister of Odisha Biju Patnaik and union ministers Santosh Mohan Dev and Salman Khurshid.