SHEROSE

India’s largest coffee shop chain Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) is a famous place for hangouts with friends and family. It is a multinational chain of coffee houses headquartered in Bengaluru. 

When the news of VG Siddhartha, the owner of the CCD committed suicide surfaced it shocked everyone in the country in 2019.

About Malavika Hegde :

Malavika Hegde is an Indian businesswoman. Her life shocked her and changed when her husband VG Siddhartha, committed suicide in 2019.

Malavika Hegde was born in 1969 in Bengaluru. She did her engineering at Bengaluru University. She is the daughter of former Karnataka Chief Minister SM Krishna. 

She got married to VG Siddhartha in 1991 and was a non-executive board member of the company. 

VG Siddhartha & CCD :

Inspired by the coffee culture around the world, VG Siddhartha planned to open a coffee shop. The first CCD outlet was launched in Bengaluru in 1996. It was meant for customers to sit and surf the internet while enjoying their coffee.

On July 29, 2019, Siddhartha went missing, and his body was found at the Hoige Bazaar beach, near the mouth of the river Nethravati on July 31, 2019. 

A typewritten note was released by ANI, in which he had apologised for failing to create the right profitable business model. 

CCD & Malavika’s leadership :

Siddhartha’s death broke Malavika and shocked the business community. People thought that the company would not survive after Siddharths’s death. But Malavika had not given up and destroyed all the doubts. 

According to the Times of India, In July 2020, she wrote a letter to the company’s 25000 employees and assured them that the Coffee Day story was “worth preserving”. “We will work to reduce the debt to a manageable level by selling a few more investments as I am committed to the company’s future”.

In December 2020, Malavika took over as CEO of Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd (CDEL). With dedication and hard work, she managed to reduce the company’s debt from Rs 7000 crore as of March 31, 2019, to Rs 1731 crore as of March 31, 2021*. This is a remarkable achievement during the COVID pandemic when the businesses were struggling and the economy was hard hit.

Her goal is to make CCD a multi-billion dollar company without the debt burden. 

Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn - Harriet Beecher Stowe

Malavika’s journey relates to the above quote and is an inspiration for all of us. Life is unpredictable and you never know what challenges will get thrown at you, you cannot control the situation but you can definitely stay prepared for whatever life throws at you. 

We have to keep our hopes alive.