VG Siddhartha goes missing, all you need to know about Cafe Coffee Day's founder

After sudden disappearance of VG Siddhartha who is the owner and founder of coffee giants Cafe Coffee Day, has led to mass speculation.

VG Siddhartha, who is also the son-in-law of former Karnataka CM SM Krishna, got off his car near the Netravati River in Mangaluru on Monday evening and thereafter has been missing.

Dakshina Kannada Police has launched a search operation to find the Karnataka based businessman.

Born in Karnataka’s Chikkamagaluru district, VG Siddhartha hails from a business background who looked into coffee plantation for 140 years. He is been attributed for creating India’s largest coffee empire.

VG Siddhartha is the alumni of the Mangalore University, at the age of 24 he joined JM Financial Ltd in 1983-84 in Mumbai as a management intern in Protfolio Management and securities trading on the Indian Stock Markets under Vice Chairman Mahendra Kampani.

After spending two long years with JM Financial Ltd, VG Siddhartha went back to Bangalore. His father gave him some money to start a business of his choice. He then bought a stock market card for 30,000 rupees, along with a company known as Sivan Securities, which became Way2wealth Securities Ltd in 2000.

By 1985, he bacame a full time proprietary investor in the stock market and owner of 10,000 acres of coffee farm.

In 1993 he started a company called Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Ltd, which use to export coffee. His plantations yielded 3,000 tonnes of coffee, the company would trade 20,000 tonnes. Within two years, the company went on to become the second largest exporter form India.

Then in 1996, the first Cafe Coffee Day store opened in Bangaluru’s Brigade Road, the coffee chain’s launch came at a time when Bangaluru was transforming from a pensioners’ paradise to an IT hub.

CCD is India’s largest coffee chain and is owned by Coffee Day Global which is a subsidiary of Coffee Day Enterprises. Today CCD has around 17,000 cafas around 48,000 vending machines, 532 stalls and 403 ground coffee selling outlets. The annual turnover of the Coffee Day Enterprises is Rs 4,264 crore.

VG Siddhartha possess 12,000 acres of coffee plantation. According to 2015 Forbes list Siddhartha’s net worth was $1.2 billion. There was also reports suggesting that Coca-Cola was in talks with CCD to acquire a substancial stake in India’s largest coffee chain. CCD was considering a valuation of Rs 8000 to 10,000 crore from Coca-Cola.

Apart from CCD, VG Siddhartha has founded a hospitality chain which runs a seven star resorts Serai and Cicada.

He is also a board member in GVT, Mindtree, Liqwid Krystal, Way2Wealth and Ittiam. VG Siddhartha was endowed with Entrepreneur of the year in 2002-03 by Econoic Times, for creating a successful pan india brand from a commodity business.

In 2017, he was accused of tax evasion, Incom tax conducted as many a 20 raids in multiple locations in Mumbai, Bangaluru, Chennai and Chikmagalur. The IT department raids on CCD chain found Rs 650 crore hidden income from the documents seized.