The founder of Asia’s largest coffee chain Cafe Coffee Day, Mr. VG Siddhartha is missing since Monday evening. There are suppositions of him having jumped in the Netravati River, Mangalore. The Mangalore police is searching for him since last night after his family filed a complaint regarding the incident. In the investigation, police have recorded the statement of his driver, Patil, who was the person with Siddhartha. According to the driver, Siddhartha asked him to move his car towards Netravati River Bridge instead of his Sakleshpur, where he was supposed to reach. After reaching there he was told to wait back as the CCD Owner wanted to walk for some time. The driver waited for more than an hour and called his family when VG did not return, and patil could not find him nearby. After this, the family filed a complaint, and the police since then is searching for him in the Netravati River with around 200 policemen and 25 boats.
Here is what the driver is saying about the incident that took place last night
According to Patil’s statement, they started from Bangalore as they had to reach Sakleshpur. But, the CCD Owner asked him to stop by as he had to see the site from another end. After that, he waited or 2 hours and informed his family members about the incident.
The news has become a sensation because apart from being the founder of our favorite coffee chain, he is also the son-in-law of Karnataka’s CM, governor of Maharashtra and external affairs minister of India. He had once made sensation as CCD in itself was the success story of becoming the largest coffee chain of Asia. Another reason the news has shocked everyone his statement that he has “failed as an entrepreneur.” His doom is believed to visit him first in 2017, when the Income Department found 650 crores of black money from his property, and after that, he sold his shares to a company named L&T.
Siddhartha’s own statement before taking the action
During the investigation, a letter is found which the CCD Owner has written his CCD family in which he is apologizing for his actions. This letter has revealed the mind-state he was in. In his letter to the board of directors he writes, he has failed to create the right profitable business model though the made his best efforts. He further writes, “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 from one of the private equity partners forcing me to buy back shares, a transaction I had partially completed six months ago by borrowing a large sum of money from a friend.”
What the present status of his business?
VG Siddhartha came into limelight when he founded Café Coffee Day in the 1990s, and it became a name around the world. His family is planting coffee for 140 years and it is the first time when the company’s shares plunged 20% after the news become viral. Though Siddhartha has wished his company luck and success without him, we still wish to find him alright. That is what we can do for now, but I would be the circumstances could worsen for his family and his 30,000 employees, if the CCD Owner is not traced soon.
