Cafe Coffee Day- A lot more can happen behind that cup of coffee!!! :(
Hi friends,
V G Siddhartha-the name synonymous with Cafe Coffee Day, the chain of coffee outlets also known as Starbucks of India. Did you or me know him like that until yesterday? I can vouch that the general public including me was unaware of its founder compared to other business tycoons like Ambanis, Vijay Mallaya, Lalit Modi, Bajaj, the Rajus of Satyam Computers, the biocon founder lady Kiran Mazumdar etc. The man who redefined the way the Indians drank coffee in the early 1990s did not deserve to become an overnight household name in a tragic manner. Hailing from family who owned acres of coffee plantations in Chikmangaluru, Mr Siddhartha started a coffee trading company, ABC with Rs 60 million turnover. He improved an ailing coffee curing unit in Hassan and has curing capacity of 75,000 tonnes. He exported thousands of tonnes of coffee and sold 2,000 tonnes of coffee locally.
In 1996, he opened the first ever Cafe Coffee Day, in Brigade Road of Bangalore targeting the youth coffee lovers. The tagline 'A lot can happen over a cup of coffee' became synonymous With Cafe Coffee day. The early 1990s was the period when IT sector was just expanding in the Silicon Valley of India, and CCD was described as a youth hangout which doubled as a browsing center. This idea was quite new that time, and it captured the imagination of the upscale urban class. That was the beginning of CCD's journey of expanding the chain of coffee outlets not only in different parts of India, but also abroad posing as a competitor to Starbucks. Soon, we get to see at least one outlet of CCD everywhere, but we never thought of the founder. Its logo, a red chat bubble indicating 'conversation' is very attractive. The company also set up lots of coffee vending machines at different places though I do not remember seeing them much. Though I have rarely sat in a Cafe Coffee day outlet, I always like the ambiance inside it. The wide variety of selection for the coffee lovers just amazed everybody. Cafe Latte, Expresso, Cappuccino, Aztec, Cafe mocha, Irish coffee, flavored cappuccinos and Lattes are in the top of the list. These were offered in various quantities like small, medium, large. In addition to this were different flavors of cold/iced coffees, not to let out various flavors of tea are to name a few along with some heavy snacks to keep our stomachs happy for few hours while on the go. I usually have either cafe mocha or cafe latte which somewhat tasted like our local coffees. I buy them at airports before waiting to board the flights. Almost every airport in India will have a CCD shop. Other than this, we stop on highways to grab a frothy cup of chocolate coffee or latte along with a snack. Of course, the rates are exorbitant compared to local and normal coffees, but the shop looked attractive enough for one to spend hours at a stretch.Though we don't frequently go to the CCD outlet near our place, I feel like going inside the shop and spend some lazy hours. That is the kind of power to draw these shops have.
When the first news about the missing founder came in, I did not pay much attention. But by the next day, ie yesterday, the mystery of his disappearance had become large. From his personal letter stating that he was responsible for the mismanagement of his businesses, which included hospitality management and other companies, incurring a huge debt which ran into more than 6000 crores of liabilities. A series of income tax raids on various outlets seemed to have put lot of pressure and drove him into depression. I do not want to comment on the raging political angle that is brewing up on these tax raids now. A lot of things need to unfold, before we can conclusively comment on these issues. Being the son-in-law of the former Chief Minister, S M Krishna, obviously have not helped him much at least to evade these debts and escape the country like Vijay Mallaya, Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi. Though he has crores worth of immovable assets that included acres of coffee plantations in Chikmangaluru, which looked to have saved him from his debts and ultimately his life, he could not succeed in doing so. He was one of the board directors of the software company Mindtree and he would have tried to sell his shares to reduce his burden. Recently , the company was in the news that it was trying to partner with Coca cola and ITC to save itself from the loss. For an outsider and somebody like me who finds tough to understand financial complexities in these business dealings, it appeared that he should not have committed suicide like this. By serving coffee everywhere, he had indirectly connected to the public, unlike Vijay Mallaya, Nirav Modi. How many of us felt for a moment that he should have escaped the country instead of taking this extreme step? I feel sad because this man had served us different coffees at different places thus making us connected to him and then all of a sudden he decides to take his own precious life. We do not know whether this step is sudden or he was planning for sometime. Instead of reading about his life and business story and seeing him in news channels in a sensational way, we should have seen him winning the best entrepreneur awards, going to management schools to talk about his success. But alas, some are destined to be known to public in a tragic way. May his soul rest in peace. Hope his family and the board of directors work out some solution to end this debt crisis by somebody buying them out. We hope to see these CCD outlets running for a long time to come.
Meanwhile we never know how many of the mega business establishments are waiting to burst like a bubble if not managed properly or at a point goes out of control of the founder.
Deepa.
V G Siddhartha-the name synonymous with Cafe Coffee Day, the chain of coffee outlets also known as Starbucks of India. Did you or me know him like that until yesterday? I can vouch that the general public including me was unaware of its founder compared to other business tycoons like Ambanis, Vijay Mallaya, Lalit Modi, Bajaj, the Rajus of Satyam Computers, the biocon founder lady Kiran Mazumdar etc. The man who redefined the way the Indians drank coffee in the early 1990s did not deserve to become an overnight household name in a tragic manner. Hailing from family who owned acres of coffee plantations in Chikmangaluru, Mr Siddhartha started a coffee trading company, ABC with Rs 60 million turnover. He improved an ailing coffee curing unit in Hassan and has curing capacity of 75,000 tonnes. He exported thousands of tonnes of coffee and sold 2,000 tonnes of coffee locally.
In 1996, he opened the first ever Cafe Coffee Day, in Brigade Road of Bangalore targeting the youth coffee lovers. The tagline 'A lot can happen over a cup of coffee' became synonymous With Cafe Coffee day. The early 1990s was the period when IT sector was just expanding in the Silicon Valley of India, and CCD was described as a youth hangout which doubled as a browsing center. This idea was quite new that time, and it captured the imagination of the upscale urban class. That was the beginning of CCD's journey of expanding the chain of coffee outlets not only in different parts of India, but also abroad posing as a competitor to Starbucks. Soon, we get to see at least one outlet of CCD everywhere, but we never thought of the founder. Its logo, a red chat bubble indicating 'conversation' is very attractive. The company also set up lots of coffee vending machines at different places though I do not remember seeing them much. Though I have rarely sat in a Cafe Coffee day outlet, I always like the ambiance inside it. The wide variety of selection for the coffee lovers just amazed everybody. Cafe Latte, Expresso, Cappuccino, Aztec, Cafe mocha, Irish coffee, flavored cappuccinos and Lattes are in the top of the list. These were offered in various quantities like small, medium, large. In addition to this were different flavors of cold/iced coffees, not to let out various flavors of tea are to name a few along with some heavy snacks to keep our stomachs happy for few hours while on the go. I usually have either cafe mocha or cafe latte which somewhat tasted like our local coffees. I buy them at airports before waiting to board the flights. Almost every airport in India will have a CCD shop. Other than this, we stop on highways to grab a frothy cup of chocolate coffee or latte along with a snack. Of course, the rates are exorbitant compared to local and normal coffees, but the shop looked attractive enough for one to spend hours at a stretch.Though we don't frequently go to the CCD outlet near our place, I feel like going inside the shop and spend some lazy hours. That is the kind of power to draw these shops have.
When the first news about the missing founder came in, I did not pay much attention. But by the next day, ie yesterday, the mystery of his disappearance had become large. From his personal letter stating that he was responsible for the mismanagement of his businesses, which included hospitality management and other companies, incurring a huge debt which ran into more than 6000 crores of liabilities. A series of income tax raids on various outlets seemed to have put lot of pressure and drove him into depression. I do not want to comment on the raging political angle that is brewing up on these tax raids now. A lot of things need to unfold, before we can conclusively comment on these issues. Being the son-in-law of the former Chief Minister, S M Krishna, obviously have not helped him much at least to evade these debts and escape the country like Vijay Mallaya, Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi. Though he has crores worth of immovable assets that included acres of coffee plantations in Chikmangaluru, which looked to have saved him from his debts and ultimately his life, he could not succeed in doing so. He was one of the board directors of the software company Mindtree and he would have tried to sell his shares to reduce his burden. Recently , the company was in the news that it was trying to partner with Coca cola and ITC to save itself from the loss. For an outsider and somebody like me who finds tough to understand financial complexities in these business dealings, it appeared that he should not have committed suicide like this. By serving coffee everywhere, he had indirectly connected to the public, unlike Vijay Mallaya, Nirav Modi. How many of us felt for a moment that he should have escaped the country instead of taking this extreme step? I feel sad because this man had served us different coffees at different places thus making us connected to him and then all of a sudden he decides to take his own precious life. We do not know whether this step is sudden or he was planning for sometime. Instead of reading about his life and business story and seeing him in news channels in a sensational way, we should have seen him winning the best entrepreneur awards, going to management schools to talk about his success. But alas, some are destined to be known to public in a tragic way. May his soul rest in peace. Hope his family and the board of directors work out some solution to end this debt crisis by somebody buying them out. We hope to see these CCD outlets running for a long time to come.
Meanwhile we never know how many of the mega business establishments are waiting to burst like a bubble if not managed properly or at a point goes out of control of the founder.
Deepa.
Good writeup Deepa
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