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I've failed: Cafe Coffee Day founder's letter to board

Bengaluru - In his letter, Siddhartha said he was under tremendous pressure from one of the private equity partners.

By IANS

Published: Tue 30 Jul 2019, 12:27 PM

Last updated: Tue 30 Jul 2019, 3:56 PM

Missing Cafe Coffee Day Founder V.G. Siddhartha, who according to the Karnataka police is believed to have committed suicide, and has apparently left behind to his employees a letter now doing rounds on the social media.
In his letter, he also said he was under "tremendous pressure" from one of "the private equity partners".
The 58-year-old businessman, son-in-law of former Karnataka chief minister and former external affairs minister S M Krishna has been untraceable since last evening. He was spotted last on Monday evening on the Netravati Bridge where he had gone for a stroll, a senior Karnataka police officer said on Tuesday.

Founder & owner, Cafe Coffee Day (CCD), #VGSiddhartha's letter to employees and board of directors of CCD, states, "Every financial transaction is my responsibility...the law should hold me & only me accountable."; He has gone missing from Mangaluru, search operation underway. pic.twitter.com/0GJc5vmvYt
- ANI (@ANI) July 30, 2019

The content of the letter are as follows:
"To our Board of Directors and Coffee Day family,

After 37 years, with strong commitment to hard work, having directly created 30,000 jobs in our companies and their subsidiaries, as well as another 20,000 jobs in technology company, where I have been a large shareholder since its founding. I have failed to create the right profitable business model despite my best efforts.

I would like to say I gave it my all. I am very sorry to let down all the people that put their trust in me. I fought for a long time but today I gave up as I could not take any more pressure from one of the private equity partners forcing me to buy back shares, a transaction I had partially completed six months ago by borrowing a large sum of money from a friend. Tremendous pressure from other lenders lead to me succumbing to the situation. There was a lot of harassment from the previous DG Income Tax in the form of attaching our shares on two separate occasions to block our Mindtree deal and then taking possession of our Coffee Day shares, although the revised returns have been filed by us. This was very unfair and has led to a serious liquidity crunch.

I sincerely request each of you to be strong and to continue running these businesses with a new management. I am solely responsible for all mistakes. Every financial transaction is my responsibility. My team, auditors and senior management and totally unaware of all my transactions. The law should hold me and only me accountable, as I have withheld this information from everybody including my family.

My intention was never to cheat or mislead anybody, I have failed as an entrepreneur. This is my sincere submission. I hope someday you will understand, forgive and pardon me.

I have enclosed a list of our assets and tentative value of each asset. As seen below our assets outweigh our liabilities and can help repay everybody.

Regards,

V.G. Siddhartha

27/7

Siddhartha, who is the son-in-law of former Karnataka Chief Minister S.M. Krishna went missing on Monday night.

"Siddhartha is suspected to have jumped into the Nethravathi river near Mangaluru from the bridge though his body has not been traced so far despite massive search operation," Mangaluru Police Commissioner Sandeep Patil told reporters.

Earlier, Siddhartha's driver Basavaraj Patil filed a complaint in a Mangaluru police station that his boss was missing from the bridge over the river where he got down from his car and wanted to take a walk. "Siddhartha got down from the car on the bridge across the river and asked him (Patil) to wait at the other end of it as he wanted to walk for a while but did not turn up even an hour later," said Patil in his complaint.