WeWork India's holding company pledges shares to raise Rs 200 Cr debt
At a time when co-working startup, WeWork is in the process of going public in US, WeWork India’s holding company is raising a debt of Rs 200 crore from ICICI Bank.
Embassy Buildcon LLP, the holding company of coworking space provider WeWork India, has pledged shares of the coworking firm for a Rs 200 crore loan from ICICI Bank, documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) revealed.
The development comes at a time when WeWork, in its recent initial public offering (IPO filing), stated that it plans to raise up to $6 billion in debt and expects that to close it along with the IPO.
WeWork India borrows from ICICI Bank
Just weeks ago, coworking startup WeWork filed its much anticipated IPO prospectus where the company also disclosed that it incurred a $900 million loss in the six months period ending June 30, 2019.
Even as it incurred massive loss, The We Co., the US firm which operates coworking office spaces under the WeWork brand, posted robust revenue growth in India. A recent PTI article stated that WeWork is expanding its India business aggressively and foraying into the Pune market where it has taken on lease over an office space of 1.22 lakh sqft to launch its 24th centre in the country.
WeWork entered India in 2016 through a partnership with Bengaluru-based real estate firm Embassy Group. Since then WeWork has been expanding its coworking spaces across the country. Before the Pune expansion, it had 23 coworking centres, having a total of 39,000 seats. It has nine centres each in Bengaluru and Mumbai, while another five in Gurugram, Haryana.
While reports suggested that the company, which rebranded to The We Company, is expected to go public by the end of next month. It is the latest to join a slew of other tech companies like Uber, Lyft, Pinterest, and Zoom that have gone public this year. The unicorn will trade under the ticker WE, and JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are the main underwriters for the IPO.
(Edited by Evelyn Ratnakumar)