Welspun bids the most for Lavasa Corporation; Lodha Developers, Jindal Steel and Power Group in fray, too
Lavasa Corporation, India's first private hill town project, is up for sale again. Creditors aim to recover their dues. Six takeover bids have been submitted, ranging from ₹500 crore to ₹850 crore. Welspun Group placed the highest bid. Other bidders include Ashdan, Pride Purple, Macrotech Developers, DB Corp subsidiary Valor, Jindal Steel and Power Group, and Yogayatan Group.
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Mumbai: Lavasa Corporation , once touted as India's first private hill town project, has received six takeover bids-ranging from ₹500 crore to ₹850 crore-as creditors try to sell the debt-laden entity for a second time to recover their dues. The Welspun Group , through a subsidiary, placed the highest bid of ₹850 crore, including ₹150 crore of process costs, documents accessed by ET showed.Other bidders include Pune-based developers Ashdan and Pride Purple, Macrotech Developers (now Lodha Developers), DB Corp subsidiary Valor, Jindal Steel and Power Group, and Mumbai-based Yogayatan Group. Details accessed by ET show that Ashdan and Pride Purple have placed a combined bid aggregating to ₹843 crore. The payment timelines for the bids are five to nine years.To be sure, most of the bids are conditional to the project receiving environmental clearance from the Maharashtra government-the primary reason it slipped into distress."Only Yogayatan has no preconditions on environmental clearance," a person aware of the details told ET. "Its bid at around ₹800 crore is also strong. Remains to be seen if lenders want to negotiate more."Another person in the know said conditional bids are unacceptable under the National Company Law Tribunal 's debt resolution process. "The committee of creditors (CoC) will have to meet and seek an alternative," the person said.Emails sent to EY-backed resolution professional Udayraj Patwardhan and process advisor to lender BoB Capital Markets did not elicit any response. Lenders are grappling with litigations on this distressed debt as they try to find a buyer for a second time after junking the previous attempt last year. Even at ₹850 crore, the highest bid received, the total recovery is less than 13% of dues of over ₹6,642 crore, after more than seven years of struggle.The NCLT had in July 2023 approved a resolution proposal from Darwin Platform Infrastructure (DPIL) submitted in December 2021, offering total payout of ₹1,814 crore to lenders over eight years and promising to deliver fully constructed houses to 837 homebuyers.However, Mumbai bench of NCLT called off the resolution plan after a full year of hearing in September last year, noting that DPIL failed to make the ₹100-crore upfront payment without any justifiable reasons. Tribunal allowed revival of resolution process and let CoC to exclude the period from July 13, 2021, to January 3, 2022, from resolution process. Lavasa was promoted as India's first privately built and managed city at the turn of the century, targeting rich urban natives from Mumbai and Pune wanting to escape the noise and pollution of cities.
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