Mumbai: Lenders to debt-laden software company Rolta India have received nine resolution plans under the ongoing bank-led insolvency process to settle more than ₹14,000 crore in unpaid dues owed to secured and unsecured creditors.
People aware of the development told ET that resolution plans have come from Rashmi Metaliks, United Biotech, Real Value Infotech Projects, Cyfuture India, Square Four Housing & Infrastructure Development, Ashdan Properties, Quant Efficient, and Yash Shares. One individual, Viren Jain, has also submitted a final bid.
“Creditors had received 19 expressions of interests (EoIs) from prospective bidders in October, out of which these nine have finally submitted a plan,” said one of the people cited earlier. “These plans will now be scrutinised to check whether they pass muster with the bankruptcy code and then assessed for their value.”
November 30 was the last day for submitting bids.
Kamal Singh-promoted Rolta is a defence-focussed software company which was admitted to the bankruptcy process in January 2023. It owes ₹7,100 crore to a clutch of banks led by Union Bank of India (UBI), and another ₹6,699 crore to unsecured foreign bond holders led by Citigroup.
ET had reported earlier that the process to find a buyer for the company was restarted in October after only one bid was received from the dozen EoIs that the resolution professional, Mamta Binani, received in April.
Rashmi Metaliks, the only bidder then, has also submitted a bid this time.
Binani did not respond to an email from ET. The bidders could not be immediately contacted.
“Rashmi Metaliks’ bid in October was too low – below ₹250 crore – so lenders had decided to scrap the process,” said a person aware of the details. “We are now in the second stage of the restarted process, and one hopes we will get better offers this time. The bidders are a mix of real estate and software companies.”
Rolta’s creditors are not very hopeful of getting a good value for the company’s software assets, but are pinning their recovery expectations on selling its real estate properties across India, most of which are kept as collateral. Rolta had defaulted on foreign currency loans provided by Indian banks in 2016.
It has avoided the bankruptcy process thrice –first in May 2019, by seeking a six-month forbearance from lenders, then again after a UBI petition was dismissed by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), and then in November 2019, after the Bombay High Court cancelled an admission stating that due procedures were not followed.
Finally, in January this year, the tribunal admitted a petition filed by UBI in 2020. UBI is the largest lender to Rolta with Rs 2,262 crore in unpaid dues, which accounts for more than 17% of the total dues to secured creditors.
