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

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 even after an hour.

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.

Meanwhile, a letter reportedly written by VG Siddhartha to the CCD board has emerged, in which the founder wrote that he failed to create the right profitable business model despite taking best efforts. He said that he "could not take any more pressure from one of the private equity partners".

"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 in the letter dated July 27.

Here's the full text of Siddhartha's letter to CCD board:

To Our Board Directors & 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 position 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 are 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,

VG Siddhartha

First Published:Jul 30, 2019 10:20 AM IST