[maddy42]

Originally Posted by paragsachania

As someone who was born and brought up in and around Coffee Land, there is nothing more shocking than this news.

Vouch for this the coffee farmers are very thankful for companies like ABC which totally bought some honesty in the business and made payments on time. There were a lot of farmers and traders who did commit suicide in the late 90s.

CCD did help popularise the cafe culture and promoted coffee as a drink in our country which is a tea drinking nation. Sad to see this news and really hope that he comes back to fight another day.

Lastly hope that babus who torture businessmen without a proof and use blackmail as a technique get jail time. British left but left us with the IAS babus.

Maddy

[adithya.kp]

I think the stake sale proceeds was around 2000 cr. They had a net debt of 4000 crore before that. So the final net debt would still be around 2000 cr. Remember this is for the listed company CCD. How knows how much debt he had at his personal capacity?. We can see that he had pledged 75% of his CCD shares. That must have been used to fund some other personal business.

As for someone asking why cant they use their assets to clear the debt, it wont be easy to liquidate the assets like land etc.

What I dont understand is, who found this letter allegedly written by him?. Since this is dated 27th July, why did they not take any action? How authentic is this letter?

Originally Posted by fordday

I don't understand this. Just three months ago he sold his MindTree stake to L&T for 3300 crores and made a profit of 2800 crores in the sale, as per reports.

How can one say he killed himself because of lack of finances.
Moreover CCD is a not a private firm but publicly listed company and though he is the main promoter there is a board who are equally responsible for running it.

His father in law is with the present political setup which makes it doubtful that some officer can harass him to drive to suicide.

[dailydriver]

Adding to what Paragbhai said, Siddhartha is a household name in these parts. Though not a typical rags to riches story, his journey from being a coffee planter's son to a renowned business tycoon is the stuff of legends.

Every coffee grower worth his salt in Chikkamagaluru district has had an interaction and/or business transaction with Siddhartha and his company. His main godown on Mudigere road was once, long back, submerged in flood waters. That was perhaps the first time I, a school boy, learnt of ABC. The proliferation of coffee vending machines across the state was what gave the brand Coffee Day a lot of popularity. They appeared at friendly neighborhood shops, bakeries and milk parlours. A cup of tasty and quality coffee for five bucks got in a lot of customers.

On the other end of the spectrum, CCD revolutionalized the coffee drinking scene in India. That a concept can egg on a customer to spend upwards of a hundred bucks on a cup of coffee was itself a novel thought: it still is, to many.

Chikkamagaluru has The Serai Resorts and Amber Valley International School as his main visible businesses. In addition, two vocational training institutes run by the group have been of immense use to the local youth.

Of late, all of us were looking forward to the completion of the Multi Specialty Hospital that was taking shape on the outskirts of the city. People say that it was his dream to provide access to affordable medical care to the people of his district. It is said that all the proceeds from the sale of sites in a recently developed layout in Chikkamagaluru were to be invested for the establishment of the hospital.

On a rather practical front, I am dumbfounded by the fall from grace of a lot of heroes; the tragic stories of D K Ravi, Kallappa Handibag and more recently, of the resignation from IPS of K Annamalai being prime examples.

Businesses fall and rise. Life, once lost, is lost forever. If indeed Siddhartha has wilfully ended his, isn't that a sad commentary on the state of things in our society?

Could a session on a psychologist's couch have saved him and the aforementioned others?

Siddhartha had always maintained a low profile. He was, if I go by what his associates say, an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Media reports too are speaking of his transactions that weren't known even to his closest companions.

Hope he lives; If he doesn't/isn't, we have lost a dreamer who began with 7.5 lakh rupees in the eighties and generated unimaginable wealth: and helped at least 40,000 people shape their lives.

[Thilak29]

I have got a huge amount of respect for the path he took and the battles he fought. I've fortunate friends who interacted with him who say he is humble to the core.

He was an ardent supporter of rallies in Chikmagalur, he is one of the sponsors of Chikmagalur Motor Sports Club. Rallies like INRC, APRC were held under this umbrella. Drivers like Gill remember the great host Siddarth was!

When local administration objected for use of public roads, he allowed rally track creation inside his estates.

The coffee day used to offer free food and drink for onlookers. Once, when rally organisers kept entry tickets, he felt sad for this move and bought all of them to ensure the public get to see the event and organisers are not at loss.

One of his estates even had a marathon track created which gets used to during ultramarathon events.

Found this article which has good pictures for reference.

Hope he returns safely with high rally spirits.

[speedmiester]

According to some very close sources, Siddhartha has too much exposure in commercial real estate across major cities to the tune of 100s of millions of dollars. This was the driver for him to sell his stake in Mindtree early this year. He was pushing Mindtree founders to buy back his shares, but with little success. This is where L&T stepped in and took over Mindtree in a hostile takeover.
This did little to clear off his debt, the debt with banks and PE firms were too high.

Also Coca-Cola backed out of the Coffee Day deal as it was not lucrative for them.
CCD as a business has very high exposure to high rentals as most of them are located in posh neighbourhoods with a few located just within 100 meters of each other. This does not make any business sense.

[deehunk]

Originally Posted by speedmiester

According to some very close sources, Siddhartha has too much exposure in commercial real estate across major cities to the tune of 100s of millions of dollars.
CCD as a business has very high exposure to high rentals as most of them are located in posh neighbourhoods with a few located just within 100 meters of each other. This does not make any business sense.

This is not to hurt anybody's sentiments or out of hatred, he was a direct beneficiary of real estate boom in 2000. The list of prime lands owned by him/his group in erstwhile PSU's and other prominent locations of Bangalore alone made him a big shot. Social activist SK Hiremath fought a lone battle against him with no result.

[deehunk]

The body of Siddartha found early morning near Hoige Bazar.

[Samurai]

Please don't upload the gruesome images of the body. It is being splashed in every possible media channels, we don't need to show it here. - Support Team

[dailydriver]

A huge void.

A loss of massive proportion.

The end of an era.

Looking at and listening to the people around me, I turn watery eyed.

No one is without faults, but when, at the end of your life, you are remembered more for your goodness than otherwise, you have lived fruitfully.

You shouldn't have died like this; you did.

But you will live forever in our hearts.

PS: When I, and many like me, meet you in the ether world, we would expect you to be offering us all a cup of CCD coffee; with that trademark, unassuming smile.

RIP brother.

[hemanth.anand]

A friend of me told today that CCD would've probably seen more number of prospective brides and grooms meet for the first time than any other place.
If I count my own family there must've been at least 5 matches finalized after the first meet at a nearby CCD.
Other than that, I can imagine the number of job interviews, business deals, casual meetups, long romantic late night rides that have happened in CCDs. While on a Roadtrip with family that was the most preferred place for me for a stopover...especially in this part of the country.

While these will still continue (hope and wish that it does), the man who started this in gone in a very unfortunate way. Looking at his tale, I feel that if too much money leads to this, I'm happy with less money and struggle rather than dying because of having made too much.

[Guna]

Originally Posted by deehunk

This is not to hurt anybody's sentiments or out of hatred, he was a direct beneficiary of real estate boom in 2000. The list of prime lands owned by him/his group in erstwhile PSU's and other prominent locations of Bangalore alone made him a big shot. Social activist SK Hiremath fought a lone battle against him with no result.

This is true. I was told that he was behind Bagmane TechPark (CV Raman Nagar), which was essentially a lake revival project to begin-with.
If the business and transactions are totally clean, probably one would declare himself bankrupt, which may be followed by his property getting attached (or worst, he will be forced to fight numerous cases). But Mr. Siddharth was hounded by the ED in the case of unaccounted money (in the tune of Rs 400 crore) and looks like there is a Hawala angle to it. Probably this is what he has referred to in his letter, when he mentioned about the 'transactions only known to him, and only he is responsible'.
But whatever it is, the good deeds far outweigh the 'possible' bad and he should have lived even if it means facing the law.

[deehunk]

He became a victim of his close affinity with wrong people, once you get trapped in the vicious circle, it is difficult to come out. I am proud of him that a Kannadiga became one of the greatest entrepreneur of India. The denial statement from IT is a silly excuse, the onus is on GOI to conduct a transparent investigation to find out the perpetrators.

[Thermodynamics]

Are there more coming ? as per this report

Not easy to do business in India, say entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs, who have dealt with multiple government agencies, also feel that there are too many government bodies that play an active role in the journey of a company and, more often than not, it only complicates the operations of the company while increasing the compliance costs manifold.

Any company can quickly spiral out of smooth operations if there is no quick convergence of plans and resolutions between various stakeholders and things may never return to normal once they go out of hand. Apart from investors, customers, employees and partners, the government is one big, multi-party stakeholder as well. There are various departments or wings of the government and they do not talk to each other and this complicates matters.

The problems are many and they all boil down to increasing unpredictability in the ecosystem for doing business.

Too many compliances mean too many opportunities for harassment and extracting money from SMEs by authorities as they cannot hire a team of lawyers and consultants.

If this can happen to Mr. Siddhartha, who was from a well-connected family set-up, think of common entrepreneurs like us, said Mr. Kumar.

[ajmat]

Originally Posted by Guna

This is true. I was told that he was behind Bagmane TechPark (CV Raman Nagar), which was essentially a lake revival project to begin-with.
.

Not exactly, he might have financed it. The Bagmane's are his mother in laws family. One of them is a junior partner in some of his ventures

[kiku007]

I've heard good things about his family. People in the Coffee business would know them.

Most of the personal riders/drivers would remember CCD for providing a clean pitstop on the highways.

I remember CCD and Qwikys to be the hip joints back in the 90s./early 2000s.

What a sad ending to the founder of CCD. R.I.P

P.S: If what another member has mentioned is true, then Real Estate has consumed another victim. In the past couple of years I've heard of quite a number of good businesses that went bust because of their group company's losses in real estate.