Coffee Day MD VG Siddhartha goes missing: From being coffee king to selling off Mindtree shares — 5 facts about him

VG Siddhartha, who was also on board for GTV, Mindtree, Liqwid Krystal, Way2Wealth and Ittiam had sold 20 percent stake in Mindtree to Larsen & Toubro recently through block deal for about Rs 3,210 crore.

Even after Mindtree management approached Siddhartha not to sell the stake to Larsen & Toubro, it failed to convince the Coffee Day owner.

In a letter written by Siddhartha, which has surfaced after the Coffee Day founder has gone missing, he said, "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 lead to a serious liquidity crunch."

Mindtree Limited — is an Indian multinational IT and outsourcing company — with its headquartered in Bengaluru and New Jersey, USA. The company is owned by Larsen & Toubro (L&T).

Founded in 1999, Mindtree, which has approximately 20,204 employees, deals in e-commerce, mobile applications, cloud computing, digital transformation, data analytics, enterprise application integration, and enterprise resource planning.

A letter by missing Coffee Day Managing Director and Chairman VG Siddhartha has surfaced in which the Karnataka-based businessman has said, "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 me succumbing to the situation," VG Siddhartha wrote in the letter. (Photo: Reuters)

Born in Chikmagalur district in Karnataka, VG Siddhartha's family has been into coffee plantation business for over 140 years. Siddhartha went to Mangalore University to earn a Master's degree and later worked with JM Financial Limited in Mumbai from 1983-1984 as a management trainee. His profile was Portfolio Management and securities trading.

Siddhartha later returned to Bengaluru and opened a company called Sivan Securities later known as Way2wealth Securities Ltd. This company's venture capital division further came to be known as Global Technology Ventures (GTV).

After returning to Bengaluru, Siddhartha also managed to buy a stock market card for Rs 30,000.

Excelling in his coffee business, Siddhartha by 1985 became the owner of 10,000 acres of coffee farms.

Reports say he doubled the money which he invested in coffee plantations after economic liberalisation in coffee trading in 1990.

The founder and owner of Cafe Coffee Day VG Siddhartha opened its first outlet in Bengaluru at Brigade Road.

With a rise in its popularity, Cafe Coffee Day became India's largest coffee chain having around 1,700 cafes, 48,000 vending machines, 532 kiosks and 403 ground coffee selling outlets across the country.

Another development which surfaced a couple of months ago was that Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) was in talks with another popular global franchise Coca Cola to sell a substantial stake and eyeing a valuation of Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 crore. 

Cafe Coffee Day founder and owner, VG Siddhartha has been accused of tax evasion by IT officials in 2017.

In a raid which was conducted by income sleuths in 2017 across 20 locations in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Chikmagalur in relation to Siddhartha, officials concluded with an admission of previously concealed income exceeding Rs 650 crore. 

Portion of his shares linked to Mindtree were attached by the tax authorities in 2019, something which makes a mention in his letter.