Mumbai (India), 19th May 2023: SpaceMantra has emerged as the sole bidder interested in acquiring all of Future Retail’s assets. The news broke out when bids for the insolvent business were opened on Thursday.
Future Retail gained consent from the bankruptcy court last month to extend the deadline for completing its resolution process by another 90 days ie. until July 15.
Former NBCC chairman Anoop Kumar Mittal’s SpaceMantra has proposed Rs 550 crore for the acquisition bid. However, the amount is less than 3% of the financial creditors’ total outstanding dues of Rs 19,200 crore.
Mittal and Ashish Agarwal’s SpaceMantra is a recognised building material retailer.
According to sources, the creditors have also received five additional significantly smaller bids for various pieces of the business.
SpaceMantra, Pinnacle Air, Palgun Tech LLC, Lehar Solutions, Goodwill Furniture, and Sarvabhishta e-waste management were the top six bidders.
Adani Group and Reliance Retail backed out due to the high valuation of the Future Group assets that were up for sale.
According to individuals acquainted with the situation, Reliance Group was interested in purchasing a number of assets from whatever remained of the Future Group after the former acquired control of the most of its prominent physical retail holdings.
Future Retail, which owned well-known brands such as Big Bazaar, Easyday, and Foodhall, operated several retail formats in the hypermarket, supermarket, and home segments. Future Retail had over 1,500 stores in approximately 430 cities at its peak.
However, following loan defaults, Future Retail’s lender Bank of India initiated the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP). On October 4, 2022, EoI was requested from prospective bidders under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.
