The body of VG Siddhartha, the founder of India's largest coffee chain Cafe Coffee Day and who also owned Asia's single largest Coffee estate, was found near Netravathi river in Karnataka, reported CNN-News18.

VG Siddhartha is the son-in-law of former Karnataka Chief Minister SM Krishna. Siddhartha wanted to join the Indian Army but went on to create India's largest coffee empire.

Here's all you need to know about VG Siddhartha:

VG Siddhartha comes from a family that has a 135-year history of growing coffee. Despite this, he was a reluctant entrant into this industry and wanted to work as an investment banker in Mumbai after completing his Master's degree in Economics from Mangalore University.

In 1984, VG Siddhartha launched his own investment and venture capital firm - Sivan Securities, which was renamed in 2000 as Way2wealth Securities Ltd.

Almost 15 years later, Siddhartha established a successful coffee business in Karnataka. He was the first entrepreneur in Karnataka to set up a café in 1996 (Café Coffee Day, a chain of "youth hangout" coffee parlors). Now, he has 1,740 CCD stores in around 250 cities.

VG Siddhartha opened Cafe Coffee Day's first outlet on Bangalore's upscale Brigade Road in 1996.

All the coffee served at Coffee Day outlets comes from the 10,000 acres of plantations that Siddhartha owns in Chikamagalur, Karnataka.

CCD clocked revenue of Rs 1,777 crore & Rs 1,814 crore in FY 2018 & 2019, respectively, and eyeing Rs 2,250 crore by March 2020.

The Coffee Day Group has interests in coffee retailing, logistics, technology parks (SEZ and STP scheme), financial services and investments in technology and software companies. The coffee retailing business under the brand Café Coffee Day is the market leader in India.

Besides Cafe Coffee Day, Siddhartha has founded a hospitality chain which runs a seven-star resort Serai and Cicada.

Siddhartha was in news recently for his stake in software services firm Mindtree. He started investing in Mindtree over a decade ago and gradually accumulated 20.41 percent stake in Mindtree until 2019.

On March 18, 2019 Larsen and Toubro (L&T) bought his entire stake for a price not exceeding Rs 3,269 crore.

First Published:Jul 30, 2019 8:12 AM IST