CCD Founder – V.G. Siddhartha’s body has been found
The body of the Founder of Café Coffee Day, popularly known as CCD – V.G. Siddhartha has been found at Netravati river in Karnataka today morning, i.e., Wednesday, July 31, 2019.
The Founder of Bengaluru based coffee chain had been missing since Monday night, i.e., July 29, 2019, while he was on his way to Mangaluru. He was travelling from Bengaluru to Sakleshpur in Hassan District in a car. On his route, he reportedly asked his driver – Basavaraj Patil to take him to Mangaluru. As the car reached Ullala bridge, he asked his driver to stop the car and started walking alone. He even asked his driver to wait for him.
After some time, the driver called-up Siddhartha but his phone was switched-off. The driver panicked and immediately dialled Siddhartha’s son – Amartya, who in-turn asked him not to panic and wait for some time. However, after waiting for long, he finally lodged a complaint with the police.
On Tuesday, i.e., July 30, 2019, a fisherman said he saw a man jumping into the Netravathi river. Teams of National Disaster Response Force, Coast Guard, Home Guard and Coastal Police went into the river to track the missing coffee supremo. The local fisherman also joined the rescue operation. But, with no success, the search operation was suspended for the night. A boat was put on stand-by mode.
Today morning, 2 fishermen found a body 500 meters away from the bridge where Siddhartha was last seen. The upper torso of the body was naked, but he had the trousers on. The police approached Siddhartha’s family who identified the deceased as Siddhartha. The body was kept at Wenlock Hospital for the autopsy. The last rites will be done today at Siddharatha’s native village, Chikkamgaluru.
On Tuesday, July 30, 2019, a letter was recovered that Siddhartha had written to the Board of Directors. In the letter, he talked about the rising debt and how it impacted the working and continuity of the business. He also wrote that he was feeling the pressure from private equity investors and personnel of Income Tax. The letter was written on Saturday, July 27, 2019.
The letter read, “I have failed to create the right profitable business model despite my best efforts. I would like to say I gave it my all. I am very sorry to let down all the people that put their trust in me. I fought for a long time but today I gave up as I could not take any more pressure.”
He also wrote, “I am solely responsible for all mistakes. Every financial transaction is my responsibility.”
Reacting to Siddhartha’s claim of harassment, the Income Tax Department’s said that the signatures of Siddhartha in the letter does not match with the signatures in their record.
Siddhartha founded the CCD in 1993 and opened the first outlet in Bengaluru. Since then, the company has grown to emerge as India’s biggest coffee chain, with over 1,750 outlets across 245 Indian cities. It also has presence in Austria, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Malaysia and Nepal.
The company went public in 2015 and got listed on the stock market. While Siddhartha owned 33% stake, his wife and family-owned entities hold another 21%.
Besides, as per the reports of Business daily, The Economic Times, Siddhartha was in talks with Coca Cola for selling his company at U.S. $ 1.45 billion.
