VG Siddhartha, CCD Founder & SM Krishna’s Son-in-Law, goes missing; search operations underway

Karnataka businessmen and former chief minister SM Krishna’s son-in-law VG Siddhartha is said to be missing from Mangaluru since Monday evening. Siddhartha, the owner of ‘Cafe Coffee Day’ outlets, was missing from near the Netravati river. Search operations are currently underway in and around the river, said an ANI report.

Siddhartha, whose firm Amalgamated Bean Company is one of India’s largest exporters of coffee, also has several other businesses in the technology and the hospitality sectors. According to report, Dakshina Kannada police have launched a massive operation to locate and rescue Siddhartha. More details are awaited. 

Siddhartha was reportedly last driven to a bridge across the Netravathi River near Mangaluru, about 375 km from the state capital of Bengaluru. He got down from the car while talking to someone on the phone and failed to return even after a whole hour. AFter that the driver alerted family members and the matter was reported to the authorities.

Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa visited SM Krishna's residence early in the morning, ANI report said.

Cafe Coffee Day has 1,752 outlets across India as of March 2019. Coffee Day Enterprises clocked revenue of Rs 1,777 crore and Rs 1,814 crore In FY18 and 19 respectively. The company is reportedly eyeing revenue of Rs 2,250 crore by March 2020.

Notably, VG Siddhartha recently sold 20.3 percent stake in Mindtree to L&T.

Earlier in 2017, Siddhartha was found into a tax evasion controversy with raids conducted at over 20 locations in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Chikmagalur by the IT departments of Karnataka and Goa. Sleuths with the I-T department had stated that Siddhartha had previously concealed income exceeding Rs 650 crore. 

Siddhartha is married to the veteran politician's first daughter Malavika and the couple has two sons. Siddhartha also founded a hospitality chain which oversees the operations of a seven-star resort Serai and Cicada.

Full Text of VG Siddhartha letter to Board and Employees

VG Siddhartha

"To our Board of Directors and Coffee Day family,

After 37 years, with strong commitment to hard work, having directly clearly 30,000 jobs in our companies and their subsidiaries, as well as another 20,000 jobs in technology companies where I have been a large shareholder since its founding, I have failed to create the write 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 couldn't take any more pressure from one of the private equity partners forcing me to buyback shares, a transaction I had partially completed six months ago by borrowing a large sum of money from a friend. Tremendous pressure from other vendors let to me succumbing to the situation. There was a lot of harassment from the previous DG Income Tax in the form of attache 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 lead to the serious liquidity crunch. 

I sincerely request each of you to be strong into continue running these businesses with 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 assets. As seen below, our assets outweigh our liabilities and can help repay everybody." 

(Zee Business does not vouch for the veracity of this purported letter written by VG Siddhartha)