Sad news for Cafe Coffee Day fans and coffee lovers in India as the man who is known as the “Coffee King” has been found dead. The body of this business tycoon was recovered on the banks of Netravati River after 36 hours of search.
Check out some interesting facts about V G Siddhartha and his inspiring journey:
Family background
Siddhartha comes from a family that has a 135-year history of growing coffee. Despite this, he didn’t want to enter this industry as he wanted to work as an investment banker in Mumbai after completing his Master’s degree in Economics from Mangalore University.
In 1994, he launched his own investment firm – Sivan Securities, which was renamed in 2000 as Way2wealth Securities Ltd.
The launch of CCD
In August 1996, he opened his first CCD outlet in Bengaluru’s most-visited shopping street, Brigade Road. Now, the chain has grown to 1,750 stores across India along with 60,000 vending machines, besides presence in Austria, Czech Republic and Malaysia.
Other businesses
In addition to coffee plantation and selling, the family has other businesses like logistics, technology parks (SEZ and STP scheme), financial services and investments in technology and software companies.
Besides CCD, Siddhartha has founded a hospitality chain which runs a seven-star resort Serai and Cicada.
In 2000, Siddhartha entered Mindtree by investing in the IT startup Coffee Day Trading.
The end
On Monday night, VG Siddhartha got off his car on a bridge over Netravati river near Mangaluru and asked his driver to wait at the other end of the bridge. Basavaraj Patil, the driver did exactly so but all in vain.
A letter about the reasons for his breakdown is going viral on the internet in which he has explained about not creating a profitable business model for CCD despite many efforts:
