Coffee Day Enterprises tanks 20% as co-founder VG Siddhartha goes missing

Shares of Sical Logistics, another Siddhartha-promoted company saw its shares plunge 20% to Rs 72.8 in intra-day trade

Shares of Coffee Day Enterprises plunged 20 per cent to hit the lower circuit limit of Rs 154.05 on the BSE on Tuesday, after reports said VG Siddhartha, the co-founder of the country's largest coffee chain, has been missing since Monday night. Shares of Sical Logistics, another Siddhartha-promoted company saw its shares plunge 20 per cent to Rs 72.8 levels on the BSE in intra-day trade.

Siddhartha is suspected to have jumped off a bridge in Mangaluru last night, the Times of India reported on Tuesday. READ MORE

According to the report, the news emerged after the Mangaluru City Police started a search for a person who had jumped off the kilometre-long Ullal bridge on Monday night.

The report said one of the police officers confirmed that a person was suspected to have jumped off the Ullal bridge, which is built across the River Nethravathi at 9 pm. A search operation is now underway while his mobile phone is reported to be switched off.

According to reports by CNBC-TV18, VG Siddhartha had written a letter to CCD board saying he failed to create the right profitable business model despite best efforts.

"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 transcation I had partially completed six months ago by borrowing a large sum of money from a friend," Siddhartha wrote in the letter dated July 27. 

Siddhartha had been in the news earlier this year when news agency PTI had reported that IT company Mindtree found certain irregularities in disclosures made by him. He sold his stake in Mindtree to L&T, and it had taken action against him according to the law.

In 2011 Sical was acquired by Coffee Day group, with interests ranging from coffee retail business, stakeholdings in leading IT and embedded technology companies, to technology parks and SEZs, hospitality and financial services.