Future Retail, the flagship firm of Kishore Biyani’s Future Group, which once led organised retail in India, will cease to exist as the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has ordered its liquidation to pay off dues exceeding Rs 17,000 crore to lenders.
A bench led by Justice Kuldip Kumar Kareer on Monday said that the maximum period of the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) had expired without any resolution plan being approved by the Committee of Creditors (CoC).
“We are of the considered opinion that this is a fit case for liquidation,” the bench declared, signalling the end of Future Retail. The company’s assets will now be sold to settle its debts.
This order concludes the legacy of Future Retail, founded by Biyani over 35 years ago, which included some of India’s most popular retail chains such as Big Bazaar, Foodhall and fbb. It also brings an end to the two-year-long, highly contentious resolution process under insolvency proceedings.
Lenders had taken Future Retail to the NCLT in July 2022, following Reliance Retail’s withdrawal from a Rs 24,713-crore acquisition deal for the Future Group. The deal, first announced in August 2020, had been embroiled in numerous legal battles.
In 2023, Space Mantra, a construction materials platform, presented a resolution plan with a bid of Rs 550 crore for Future Retail, but it was not endorsed by lenders. Notably, other bidders who submitted binding offers were primarily scrap dealers, reflecting the severe challenges Future Retail faced in its revival efforts, legal experts said. Bids from Reliance Retail, the Adani Group and Jindal Power also did not materialise, the experts stated.
The NCLT had granted four extensions to Future Retail for completing the CIRP, with the last date being September 30, 2023. Following this, no further extensions were granted, and an application for liquidation was filed in November last year.