CCD Founder, VG Siddhartha’s Death Throws Light On The Reality Of Entrepreneur World

As Indians we sure do love our cup of coffee or tea, some of us cannot kick-start the day without having it, right? If we recall our love for coffee especially, we’ll realize that we’ve always loved the caffeine drink only when we had it within the confined walls of our home. Ask anybody around you, “When did you start drinking coffee outside? Which was the first coffee shop you paid a visit to?” We are so sure that at least three-fourth of them would answer that their first cup of cappuccino was from Café Coffee Day! Known better by the abbreviation of CCD, Café Coffee Day probably pioneered the trend of “Made in India” decades back. It was our country’s very own growing Indian Café chain under Coffee Day Global Limited.

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CCD gained popularity, especially among the youngsters, because of its vibrantly designed cafes that provide a cozy ambiance for either spending a good time with friends or special ones. They say that the tagline that accompanies a brand does nearly half of the marketing work and that’s exactly what CCD’s tagline, “A lot can happen over coffee” did. While all of us, as customers of CCD, might only be awestruck by the whopping 1,752 number of cafes that CCD has opened in India; none of us were aware of the trouble brewing within the company. However, with the sudden news of CCD Founder-Chairman VG Siddhartha going missing on July 29, the whole country and even the world were taken aback.

The Mysterious Disappearance Of VG Siddhartha

HindustanTimes

While most of us were battling the Monday blues on July 29, Siddhartha went missing and this news created storm all over the nation as he was the founder of India’s largest coffee chain Café Coffee Day. He is said to have left Bengaluru to go to Sakleshpur in Hassan district of Karnataka. On his way, he asked his driver, Basavaraj Patil, to head to Mangalore instead. As they approached Mangalore, Siddhartha asked his driver to stop by the Ullal bridge and told him that he wanted to go for a walk. The driver says that Siddhartha walked towards the bridge and didn’t return. After waiting for an hour and calling Siddhartha’s phone several times, which was switched off, the driver panicked and informed the family members of Siddhartha and also lodged a police complaint.

Around 6 A.M. the next day (July 30th), intense search operations were carried out across the Netravati river to find Siddhartha. The search operations were suspended at night. In the wee hours of the next morning, on 31st July, nearly 36 hours after Siddhartha went missing, his body was found floating by the shores of the Netravati river. The body was found and fetched by the fishermen. The news about the body being found saddened many entrepreneurs worldwide and his CCD family was devastated.

Siddhartha’s Letter To His CCD Family

Twitter

While the search was being carried out for his body on Tuesday, a purported last letter that Siddhartha wrote to his employees started doing rounds on social media. The letter quite literally indicated the mountain of debt Siddhartha’s business was impaired with. In his letter addressed to the Board of Directors and Coffee day family, Siddhartha said, “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…” The letter, which was tweeted by ANI also said, “…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 led 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 the position of our Coffee Day shares… This was very unfair and has led to a serious liquidity crunch.” (1)

Amongst all the speculation about the authenticity of the letter, The Coffee Day Enterprises nodded that it was an authentic letter. However, the Income Tax Department claimed that the letter wasn’t authentic as Siddhartha’s signature did not match with the signature found in their department’s records (2).

How This Incident Threw Light On The Obstacles Faced By An Entrepreneur

Today we remember the legend that inspired us all. Thank you Chairman VG Siddhartha for your vision, leadership and the great legacy. pic.twitter.com/tYMiglgofe

— Cafe Coffee Day (@CafeCoffeeDay) July 31, 2019

Siddhartha’s family ran their coffee business for more than 130 years. When he took over the business, he set up the CCD chain in 1996. His business flourished and his ABC (Amalgamated Bean Company) is currently India’s largest exporter of green coffee as well. So, what could have gone wrong here that led him to take such an extreme step?

Every entrepreneur, no matter how small or big, has his/her business go through n number of ups and downs. There are battles with the market, there are challenges with handling the income tax problems, and of course, there are customer satisfaction hurdles as well. Owing to whatever news about the reason behind this extreme step of Siddhartha is doing rounds, all we can confer is that Siddhartha kept most of his worries and problems to himself. He certainly had this storm intensifying with every minute behind his calm demeanor that none were aware of.

Remember that if you are an entrepreneur, you are directly or indirectly contributing to the many lives of people out there and therefore, you must never be sorry about the failures you face. Yes, you started with a plan that you thought was fool-proof for at least the next one or two decades and that didn’t work out. In times like these, you need to recall the dark phases you’ve sailed through successfully. This path was chosen by you and only you have the power to walk on it till the end.

After the demise of VG Siddhartha, we aren’t seeing people coming out and talking anything that is ill with regard to him. Everybody is only praising this man’s virtues and how good a person he was. So, if you’re a friend or a spouse or are related to an entrepreneur in any way, support them. Sit and talk to them whenever you sense that they are restless or disturbed. All it takes is mental support to run a business and stay alive. For now, all we want to say is R.I.P. the Coffee King of India. We are all proud of you.

And for the Café Coffee Day family, if you check their social media pages, you’ll see the black logo that they’ve put up mourning their founder’s demise.

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