Creditors stake ₹762.74-crore claims against Future Group brand arm

Creditors have filed claims of Rs 762.74 crore against Future Brands Ltd, the Future Group entity that owned and licensed the conglomerate’s private-label portfolio, of which the interim resolution professional has admitted Rs 501.58 crore in the first list of creditors published a month into the insolvency process.

The list, drawn up as on July 16, 2026, records 10 claims received and seven admitted. Claims worth Rs 261.16 crore — more than a third of the total filed — remain under verification, and no claim has been rejected outright so far.

Financial creditors account for almost the entire admitted pool. Three secured financial creditors filed Rs 391.05 crore, of which ₹380.31 crore was admitted, giving them a 75.82 per cent share of total admitted claims; Rs 10.74 crore of their filing is still being verified. Three unsecured financial creditors filed Rs 366.66 crore, but only two claims totalling ₹116.31 crore have been admitted, a 23.19 per cent share, with Rs 250.35 crore — the single largest block of unverified claims — pending scrutiny.

Two government-dues claims of Rs 4.96 crore have been admitted almost in full, leaving ₹9,000 under verification. Two operational creditors other than workmen, employees and government departments filed Rs 6.89 lakh, none of it admitted so far. No workmen or employee claims have been received, and none from creditors in a class.

The company was admitted to the corporate insolvency resolution process by the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal on June 16, 2026, on a Section 7 petition by Union Bank of India. The bench of Nilesh Sharma (Judicial) and Sameer Kakar (Technical) appointed Kanak Jani as interim resolution professional and declared a moratorium under Section 14, directing the bank to deposit ₹3 lakh towards initial process costs. The tribunal expressly declined to crystallise the claim amount at admission, leaving collation to the IRP.

Union Bank’s petition, filed on October 14, 2025, put the default at ₹114.17 crore as on September 26, 2025, with the date of default stated as February 28, 2023. The admitted secured claims of ₹380.31 crore indicate that other consortium lenders have since filed.

The debt

The bank sanctioned a ₹260 crore term loan to Future Brands on March 18, 2019, at MCLR plus 2.35 per cent, then 10.95 per cent, repayable in 22 stepped-up quarterly instalments after a six-month moratorium. The loan part-financed the acquisition of the brands Pink & Blue, Shatranj, Shyla, Studio NX, CTee and Haute & Spicy, along with brand development and media deposits; the company’s total debt requirement at the time was ₹540 crore.

Bansi Mall Management Company Pvt Ltd stood corporate guarantor, creating a second pari passu charge on its property at SOBO Brand Factory, Tardeo Road, Mumbai. The facility was restructured in June 2021 under the Reserve Bank of India’s Resolution Framework for COVID-19 Related Stress, with a funded interest term loan of ₹42.46 crore taking total restructured debt to ₹298.55 crore. The account was classified a non-performing asset on September 30, 2022, with effect from December 29, 2020. A recall notice followed on October 11, 2022 and a SARFAESI Section 13(2) demand for ₹273.70 crore on March 24, 2023.

The bank had earlier moved against the guarantor under the IBC in CP (IB) 855 of 2023, withdrawing that petition after Bansi Mall paid ₹141.25 crore in two tranches in April 2024.

Future Brands resisted admission on the ground that it was a solvent going concern earning royalties from brands including John Miller, BARE, DJ&C, Fresh & Pure, Lombard, Srishti, IQIP, Knighthood, KORYO and Rig, and that the bank was forum-shopping given its pending recovery application before the Debt Recovery Tribunal, New Delhi, where security assets were valued at over ₹2,730.75 crore. It also disputed the date of default and the authorised signatory’s power to file.

The tribunal rejected each ground. It held that successive defaults on quarterly instalments gave a fresh cause of action, that limitation ran from October 18, 2022 on expiry of the recall notice, that a power of attorney sufficed as authorisation under Palogix, and that Vidarbha Industries was confined to its own facts — relying on the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Power Trust v. Bhuvan Madan that the enquiry at admission is limited to whether a debt is due and in default.

The company

Future Brands Ltd was incorporated in 2006 and sits at Knowledge House, the Future Group headquarters on the Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road. It functioned as the group’s brand consulting and brand-holding arm — creating and managing a portfolio of brands while selling consulting services to outside clients — under managing director and chief executive Santosh Desai, a former McCann-Erickson India president.

Trading as Futurebrands Consulting, the firm’s published client work spans Royal Enfield, Kellogg’s, Fastrack, Tata Motors, Titan, Lenskart, Biba, Wildcraft, Britannia, Colgate, Sleepwell, Nicobar, Mahindra Reva and Dalmia Bharat. It also runs Bharat Darshan, a long-running study of socio-cultural change in India.

The insolvency is the latest in the unwinding of Kishore Biyani’s Future Group, whose Rs 24,713 crore asset sale to Reliance Industries collapsed in 2022 after secured creditors voted it down, sending flagship entities including Future Retail and Future Enterprises into the IBC.

Also See: Reliance Retail to acquire insolvent Future Supply Chain for Rs 171 crore