Debt-ridden Siddhartha started selling assets earlier this year

Café Coffee Day founder VG Siddhartha, whose body was found on Wednesday morning two days after he went missing, had started selling his assets earlier this year.

Siddhartha and other founders of Coffee Day pledged about 76% of their holdings as collateral, according to filings. The debt burden prompted him to start disposing of his assets earlier this year. In April, he sold a 20% stake in software services firm Mindtree Ltd. to engineering giant Larsen & Toubro Ltd.

He was seeking a valuation of as much as $1.45 billion from Coca-Cola Co. to sell a stake in Coffee Day, newspapers reported last month.

“I gave it my all but today I gave up as I could not take any more pressure,” according to the letter dated July 27. The harassment by tax officials and pressure from



lenders led to a “serious liquidity crunch.”

The company is taking help from concerned authorities, and its leadership team will “ensure continuity of business,” Coffee Day said in an exchange filing on Tuesday.

Siddhartha, the eldest son-in-law of former union minister SM Krishna, went missing from a bridge on Monday evening after he told his driver to drop him there and wait for him at the end of the bridge.

The driver called up CCD owner’s family as he could not contact Siddhartha after waiting for two hours. A two-day multi-team search followed even as a fisherman said he had seen a man jump off the bridge. Siddhartha’s body was found on Wednesday morning bringing to an end a spectacular career that started from a café in Bengaluru and soon grew into a business empire.