VG Siddhartha, who recently ended his life in the Netravati river, Karnataka, was literally the Indian Coffee King. His business tasted success very fast but along the way came the bitter stings of failure. His death is sharing some message regarding the perils of entrepreneurship to the future entrepreneur community.
Kick-starting his career
Siddhartha kick started his career in a stockbroking firm. Later, he expanded his portfolio into various ventures. Coming from a family, which has 130 years of experience in the coffee business, Siddhartha became an instant success in his business. But he couldn’t succeed in realty and financial planning.
Cafe Coffee Day and the good old days
Abbreviated as CCD, Cafe Coffee Day, India’s largest coffee shop chain was founded by Siddhartha in 1994. It has become India’s biggest café chain with 1,500 outlets in across 200 cities in India and with a presence in Prague, Vienna and Kuala Lumpur. CCD became a public company in 2015.
Expanding his business portfolio
As part of the expansion of his business portfolio, Siddhartha launched GTV in the IT sector and Shivan Securities Pvt Ltd in the financial sector. As a tech investor, Siddhartha helped many firms reap profits. He played a crucial role in making Infosys profitable during the time when it was made a public company. Before selling his stake in Mindtree to L&T, Siddhartha was one of the biggest investors in the firm. In March 2019, he sold his 20.41% stake in Minddtree to Larson and Turbo and repaid his debt amounting to Rs 2900 crore.
Political connections and politics within
Siddhartha was well-connected in the political circle as well as he was the son-in-law of veteran politician and former Karnataka CM SM Krishna. Siddhartha’s business world started to fall apart after Income Tax officials conducted a raid in 2017. CCD suffered a huge loss. Reports say he was planning to sell his stakes in CCD to Coca Cola.
A message to Entrepreneurs
In his last letter, he wrote that he was a failure as an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur has to learn a lot of things from Siddhartha, who was a strategic brand builder, and Siddhartha who took his life leaving behind a financial mystery.
Along with coffee business, Siddhartha expanded his portfolio into IT, Realty, Finance, Wood Processing, Hospitality and Furniture sectors. Siddhartha tasted failure when he couldn’t maintain business viability in all areas. It might be his hiking debts and questionable financial transparency that might’ve led Siddhartha to take a final call on his life but not before letting the world know that he “failed to create the right profitable business model despite his best efforts”.
