Story of Souls :: A lot can happen over coffee

A lot can happen over coffee’, quickly caught the attention of the youth of this nation, and turned Café Coffee Day into one of the most frequented hang out spots in urban India. From casual meetings to work-related rendezvous, CCD had a space for every kind of tete a tete. It was a happy place. So when the news of VG Siddhartha’s suicide spread, it was a shocker for most of us. What went wrong that led to this disastrous ending? But before we get into that, let’s first understand how this coffee revolution started.

‘I believe, in the next 15-20 years, India will have 15-20 retail brands in high streets of the world. Our dream is to be one of these 15-20 brands, and make every Indian proud of our brand’- these words by VG Siddhartha sounded far fetched then. But now, Café Coffee Day has outlets in Austria, Czech Republic, Egypt, and Nepal besides almost two thousand outlets in India alone. It became possible because of one man, V Siddhartha, who had a dream and a will to turn his dream into reality.

VG Siddhartha was born in the Malenadu region of Chikkamagaluru district in Karnataka state. He comes from a family that has been in the business of coffee plantation for around 140 years. So, it won’t be an exaggeration to say that coffee ran in his genes. He acquired the taste for coffee early in his life.

After dabbling in the corporate sector for a while, he bought stocks worth Rs. 30,000 and started the company Sivan Securities. In 1999, he renamed it as Way2wealth Securities Ltd. Its venture capital division was known as Global Technology Ventures. 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. The fortunes of the company turned around, and the company has the largest curing capacity in India at 75,000 tonnes.

He was the first entrepreneur in Karnataka to set up a café in 1996, which he named Café Coffee Day, and turned them into a youth hangout coffee parlor. Initially, people could visit their coffee parlor to sip their favorite coffee while browsing the internet. But later, the Café Coffee Day or CCD evolved into purely a youth hangout café where people could sit and relax over a cup of coffee.

VG Siddhartha married to the daughter of former Karnataka CM SM Krishna. So now the question arises, what led to this brilliant entrepreneur hailing from such an influential family meet such a devastating end?

Cafe Coffee Day made coffee famous in a tea crazy nation like India, and that’s quite an achievement. But where did it all go wrong? Why did CCD come in the news for all the wrong reasons?

That Monday was like any other typical Monday. Indian entrepreneur V.G. Siddhartha asked his driver to bring him to a bridge close to the southern city of Mangaluru. Then, according to the driver, Siddhartha got out to take a walk. No one saw him again; Police recovered his body on Wednesday morning.

In a typewritten note that was released by the news agency ANI, Siddhartha — appeared to apologize for “failing to create the right profitable business model.” He said that he was under pressure from his private equity partners and other lenders. Also, the Income-tax department was harassing. It, he mentioned, had become unbearable.

What was the problem exactly, we would never be able to figure out? That buried with him forever. But he certainly changed the way one looks at the coffee in India. It was challenging to find a decent cup of coffee here, and if you want to meet someone, there was nowhere to go. Siddhartha changed it. He solved both problems. Café Coffee Day became the one-stop café for all your little rendezvouses and work-related meetings.
And yet Siddhartha wrote in his note: “My intention was never to cheat or mislead any anybody, I have failed as an entrepreneur.”

He was an entrepreneur with energy and creativity, and, unfortunately, he had to leave so soon.

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