New Delhi, April 9 -- A post by Zerodha co-founder Nithin Kamath is striking a chord with investors for raising a simple but uncomfortable question: Why are businesses that deal with money often valued more richly than those that do life-saving work?

Kamath, one of India's most-followed voices in investing and the co-founder of Zerodha, India's largest stock brokerage, said this thought stayed with him after he recently met Dr Devi Shetty, founder of Narayana Hospitals.

What troubled him was the comparison itself. Narayana Hospitals, which operates around 18,000 beds across India and is widely known for making complex surgeries more affordable, has a market capitalisation of roughly Rs.38,000 crore. Yet many financial services businesse...