More than 24 hours after Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) founder VG Siddhartha went missing, his body has been found near Karnataka's Netravathi river, reported CNN-News18. Siddhartha was missing since Monday evening.

According to reports, he got off from his car near a bridge across the river Nethravathi near Mangalore, about 375 KMs from Bengaluru, but did not return.

A panicked driver went down looking for his employer, but could not find him anywhere, after which he alerted the family members who in turn informed the police.

The Dakshina Kannada police then launched a massive search for him. Helicopters and coast guards were summoned, with over 200 people searching for him.

According to his driver, Siddhartha, known as the Coffee king of India, was talking to someone on his mobile phone when he got off from the car near Kotekar.

Also read: These are the assets of missing Coffee Day founder V G Siddhartha after Mindtree disinvestment

The news of Siddhartha's disappearance spread like wildfire across Karnataka and hundreds of his relatives and friends gathered at his father in law and former Karnataka CM SM Krishna's house in Bengaluru on Tuesday.

Even as the search operations were on, a letter reportedly written by Siddhartha to the CCD board emerged on Tuesday, in which he said that he failed to create the right profitable business model despite taking best efforts.

"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," he said in the letter written by him on July 27.

He blamed "pressure from one of the private equity partners", "pressure from other lenders", "harassment from the previous DG income tax" and "serious liquidity crunch" for his 'failure'.

"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," he wrote.

CCD is backed by KKR, which owns a 6.07 percent stake in the company, Rivendell PE, which owns 10.61 percent and Affirma Capital, which owns 5.67 percent.

Siddhartha further alleged that tremendous pressure from other lenders led to "me succumbing to the situation."

He added that 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 position of our Coffee Day shares, although the revised returns have been filed by us." This, he claimed, led to a serious liquidity crunch.

However, concluding the letter, he said that every financial transaction was his responsibility and that he was solely responsible for his mistakes. Seeking forgiveness from the "Coffee Day family", he said, "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."

Coffee Day Enterprises on Tuesday released a statement saying it is formulating appropriate steps to ensure business operations are unaffected.

"The board is confident that the professional management of the company and each of the entities in the Coffee Day Group and their respective leadership team, will ensure continuity of all business operations consistent with past behaviour," it stated.

First Published:Jul 31, 2019 7:11 AM IST