Table of Contents
EARLY LIFE
- Siddhartha was born in the Malenadu region of Chikkamagaluru district in Karnataka State. He held a master’s degree in economics from St. Aloysius College and Mangalore University, Karnataka.
- He was the son-in-law of S. M. Krishna, the former Chief Minister of Karnataka, Indian Minister for External Affairs and Governor of Maharash
THE RISING
- At the age of 24 he joined J M Financial Limited (now known as J M Morgan Stanley) in 1983–1984 in Mumbai as a management trainee/intern in portfolio management and securities trading on the Indian stock market.
- With capital given by his father, Siddhartha bought stocks worth Rs. 30,000 and started the company Sivan Securities. In 1999, it was renamed Way2wealth Securities Ltd. Its venture capital division came to be known as Global Technology Ventures (GTV)
CAFÉ COFFEE DAY
- He established his coffee trading company ABC in Karnataka 1993, with a Rs 60 million turnover. He bought an ailing coffee curing unit in Hassan for Rs 40 million and improved it.
- He grew coffee in Chikmagalur. ABC is India’s largest exporter of green coffee. He owned 12,000 acres (4047 ha) of coffee plantations.
- He was the first entrepreneur in Karnataka to set up a café in 1996 (Café Coffee Day, a chain of “youth hangout” coffee parlors). There are now 1750 Coffee Day Cafes in India. His cafes attract 40,000 to 50,000 visitors a week.
TRAGIDY
- Wednesday morning, Siddhartha’s body was found washed ashore in Karnataka’s Netravati river, 36 hours after he went missing.
- Two days prior to his disappearance, the 60-year-old had left behind a note to his employees that revealed he was in deep debt.
- Siddhartha had left Bengaluru for Sakleshpur in Hassan district in a car on Monday afternoon, but on the way he reportedly directed his driver Basavaraj Patil to drive towards Mangaluru.At a bridge near Ullala, he got down from the car, told his driver he was going for a walk and asked him to wait. He then walked towards the bridge and never returned.
REST IN PEACE
- A fisherman had claimed on Tuesday to have seen a man jumping into the Netravathi river from the same bridge, almost 24 hours after his driver raised an alarm about the missing businessman.
- Local fisherman, along with their boats, also joined in the search operations.
- WEDNESDAY, JULY 31: SIDDHARTHA’S BODY FOUND FROM RIVER.6:30 AM: Body recovered from river.
LETTER
- To our Board of Directors and Coffee day family,
- After 37 years, with strong commitment to hard work, having directly created 30,000 jobs in our companies and their subsidiaries, as well as another 20,000 jobs in technology company where I have been a large shareholder since its founding, 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 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. Tremendous pressure from other lenders lead to me succumbing to the situation. There was a lot of harassment from the previous DG income tax in the form of attaching our shares on two separate occasions to block our Mindtree deal and then taking position of our Coffee Day shares, although the revised returns have been filed by us. This was very unfair and has led to a serious liquidity crunch. I sincerely request each of you to be strong and to continue running these businesses with a new management. I am solely responsible for all mistakes. Every financial transaction is my responsibility. My team, auditors and senior management are totally unaware of all my transactions. The law should hold me and only me accountable, as I have withheld this information from everybody including my family.
- My intention was never to cheat or mislead anybody, I have failed as an entrepreneur. This is my sincere submission, I hope someday you will understand, forgive and pardon me. I have enclosed a list of our assets and tentative value of each asset. As seen below our assets outweigh our liabilities and can help repay everybody.
- Regards,
- V.G. Siddhartha
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