Can Lodha Tower Over Debt?

Abhishek Lodha’s developments are finding takers, profits are spurting but then so have finance costs and borrowings. inside the next-gen scion’s game plan to make his company net debt-free well within three years

- Pooja Sarkar

In August 2014, at a fancy red carpet event at Four Seasons Mumbai, which looked nothing less than a Hollywood movie premiere with golden barricades on the sides of the red carpet and glasses of bubbly being passed around in sleek glasses, sat the current President of the United States. Back then Donald Trump, more famous for his TV show The Apprentice and his real estate business, was flanked by son Trump Junior. And there was the man who had brought the two to the city and was to develop their Trump Tower in Mumbai: Abhishek Lodha, nextgen scion and managing director and CEO of the erstwhile Lodha Developers Ltd, officially Macrotech Developers Ltd since May 2019.

Two years before, in 2012, Lodha had swooped in to acquire DLF’s land parcel in the Lower Parel neighborhood of Mumbai called NTC Mills for ₹2,727 crore. Back then DLF was the largest developer by market capitalization, but the Delhi-headquartered realtor was stressed with nearly ₹23,220 crore in net debt and had started paring its national footprint and debt; that provided Lodha the opportunity to fuel his ambition of transforming Mumbai’s skyline with a canvas of skyscraping luxury towers.

The construction of Trump Tower is now complete, Lodha has sold 80 percent of the project, with 451 apartments of 2,222 yet to be sold. That may not be a problem. There are other dangers: Of looming debt, downgrades by credit rating agencies and an all-important US denominated bond that comes up for redemption in March 2020.

Sitting in the meeting room of Lodha World Towers—the one cheek-by-jowl with Trump Tower— the 39-year-old Lodha shows few signs of stress: “Ultimately the proof of the pudding is in the cash,” he says with a smile. He’s confident of being net debt-free “in the next 24 to 30 months”.