‘Coffee King’ found dead amid financial troubles
NEW DELHI — V.G. Siddhartha, a wealthy tycoon who beat Starbucks to dominate India’s retail coffee industry but faced personal financial troubles, was found dead Wednesday, police said. Police had carried out an exhaustive search for Siddhartha, founder of the popular chain Cafe Coffee Day, who was last seen Monday evening on a waterfront bridge outside the coastal city of Mangaluru, in southern India. Fishermen spotted his body floating near the shoreline Wednesday morning.
Hanumantharaya, a senior police official who goes by one name, said police were still investigating the cause of death.
Siddhartha, whose family has been in the coffee business for 130 years, became one of the world’s biggest traders after opening Cafe Coffee Day in 1996, earning him the nickname “the coffee king of India.” The company and its subsidiaries, which recently expanded to other countries in Asia and Europe, employ more than 30,000 people.
But Cafe Coffee Day and its parent organization, Coffee Day Enterprises, were thrown into turmoil in 2017 when Indian tax authorities raided company offices. They said they had found undisclosed transactions and illegal income, which Siddhartha denied.
This year, the company’s stock took another hit as Siddhartha struggled to pay various lenders, leading to a liquidity crunch.
Siddhartha, his wife, Malavika Hegde, and companies affiliated with them held over 50% of the equity in Coffee Day Enterprises.
On Tuesday, the company released a copy of a letter, purportedly written by Siddhartha, that was addressed to the board of directors. The letter, which was evidently written on Siddhartha’s letterhead and bears what appears to be his signature, said that he was facing “a lot of harassment” from tax authorities and that he took responsibility for “all mistakes.”
“The law should hold me and only me accountable,” the letter says. “My intention was never to cheat or mislead anybody. I have failed as an entrepreneur.”
Business owners in India have long had a tense relationship with tax authorities. High-profile cases of corruption and fraud by tycoons have engendered public distrust toward entrepreneurs. But critics say that in the name of getting tough on cheats, authorities sometimes resort to harassment to collect on tax demands, including from honest citizens.
The police said that Siddhartha, who was in his late 50s or early 60s, had told his family he was going to a holiday resort Monday. But he then asked his driver to take him to Mangaluru, about 200 miles from the company’s headquarters in Bangalore.
As evening set in, Siddhartha asked the driver to stop near the 30-foot Netravati River bridge outside the city, saying he wanted to walk.
According to local news reports, Siddhartha asked the driver to meet him on the other side of the bridge and then got on a call. When Siddhartha did not show up or answer his phone, which was switched off, the driver filed a police report.
After Siddhartha’s body was recovered, shares in Coffee Day Enterprises fell nearly 20%. Calls to the company’s headquarters in Bangalore were not answered Wednesday and its stores were ordered closed for the day.
In a statement Tuesday, Sadananda Poojary, the company secretary and compliance officer, said that Coffee Day Enterprises was cooperating with Indian authorities and that the company was “professionally managed and led by competent leadership.”