Cafe Coffee Day founder VG Siddhartha had personal debt of Rs 1,000 crore: Report

Café Coffee Day founder-owner VG Siddhartha, whose body was found in a river in Karnataka on Wednesday -- a day after a purported letter written by him surfaced -- had a personal debt of Rs 1,000 crore, a report said.

According to sources that cited corporate affairs ministry documents, the debt was primarily raised through three entities - Devadarshini Info Technologies, Gonibedu Coffee and Coffee Day Consolidations.

In September 2014, Devadarshini raised Rs 471 crore through optionally convertible debentures (OCDs) from Standard Chartered Private Equity (Mauritius), Credit Opportunities Fund and Asia Credit Opportunities (Mauritius).

In November 2018, the company also secured Rs 300 crore from SSG Asia and partially repaid these OCDs, ET quoted sources as saying. Other debt facilities mentioned in the report include a Rs 450 crore exposure in Gonibedu Coffee.

However, the documents do not specify whether the debts have been repaid.

Tanglin



Retail Realty, Siddhartha’s real estate firm, issued 30,000 secured, rupee-denominated non-convertible debentures (NCDs) — each valued at Rs 10 lakh — to Standard Chartered Bank (Singapore) on March 25.

Standard Chartered’s exposure did not extend to the full amount, the report added.

The consolidated borrowings of Coffee Day Enterprises stood at Rs 6,547.38 crore as of on March 31.

In the recovered letter dated July 27 that Siddhartha wrote to the board of employees, the Coffee King said that he “failed as an entrepreneur”.

The purported letter referred to the “tremendous pressure” he was under from lenders and “harassment” from Income Tax officials. And that he was “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,” he added.

The board appointed SV Ranganath as interim Chairman on July 31, following the news of Siddhartha’s death.