VG Siddhartha was about 26 years old and living in Bangalore (now Bengaluru) when he launched his own investment and venture capital firm – Sivan Securities.
The purpose was to invest the profits from his start-up in purchasing coffee farms in Karnataka’s Chikmagalur region.
Siddhartha, who came from a family that has a 135-year story of growing coffee, had inherited coffee farms spread across a massive expanse of 10,000 acres and wanted to link technology and coffee to start.
He was inspired by the founders of leading coffee brand in Germany – Tchibo and wanted to make coffee drinking a vital experience in common people’s lives but there was one big problem: the selling price of coffee.
During 1994-95, most of the coffee shops in India were selling coffee for as low as Rs 5 while Siddhartha wanted to sell his brew for Rs 25, a huge sum in those days.
But Siddhartha was not ready to give up, at least not yet.
"One day I was in Singapore, Boat Quay area, one of my friend was buying dinner for me and while walking out I saw people surfing the internet and drinking beer. I just went and spent half an hour in that store, I saw people drinking beer and surfing the net," Siddhartha told CNBC-TV18 in an interview aired in July 2015.That's when he decided to put up an internet café.
"I do not know people will come to drink coffee or use the internet, but people will walk in," Siddhartha said, calling the launch of Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) a fluke.
On July 11, 1996, CCD opened its first store in Bangalore with the tagline ‘A lot can happen over a cup of coffee’. Now, there are around 1,740 CCD stores in about 250 cities.
Siddhartha visited these stores several times in a year, both to keep a check on his business and also to interact with staff members.
"On average I have to go to 40-45 stores in a month. At least two-three cities of India," said Siddhartha, the founder of Cafe Coffee Day.
As the chairman and managing director of CCD, it was Siddhartha's job to track what competitors were up to and how rivals were performing, which may involve walking-into the competitors’ stores as well.
"Honestly, I don’t go to competition stores but I get a lot of information," revealed Siddhartha.
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And it was the competition that helped bring about some key changes at CCD and build a chain of "youth hangout" coffee parlours.
"The competition has helped me to change. I think competition is good for everybody in life. If you have come and spoken to me four years back, we would have been very complacent who will come here. But we know if you don’t change and if your service and your ambience and your products are not good enough, you won’t survive," he said.
The company has continued to build on this. CCD clocked revenue of Rs 1,777 crore and Rs 1,814 crore in FY 2018 & 2019, respectively, and eyeing Rs 2,250 crore by March 2020.
Today, CCD sells 6,500-7,000 tons of branded coffee, exports approximately 28,000 tons of coffee and sells another 2,000 tons locally each year and his Cafe attracts at least 40,000-50,000 visitors per week.
"We want to cover from zero to 30 percent. Some people want to concentrate only on the top 5 percent. I want the top also but I want bottom 25 percent also," said Siddhartha, a true radical and visionary for leadership and business acumen.
India paid tribute to VG Siddhartha whose body was found on Wednesday morning on the banks of river Netravathi in Karnataka. The untimely death of the entrepreneur is believed to have been the result of financial troubles that he and the company were facing.
First Published: Aug 1, 2019 11:38 AM IST
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