The Success Story of CCD (Cafe Coffee Day): VG Siddhartha

While talking about the best place to catch up with your old friends on the Indian streets, the first place that popup on our minds is undoubtedly CCD. Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) currently owns more than 1800 outlets in India which makes them easily accessible to everyone across the country. CCD also serves more than 1.8 billion cups of coffee annually across six countries including India, Austria, Czech Republic, Egypt, and Nepal. All of this got possible by VG Siddhartha founder of CCD, who started all this in 1996 from Banglore (India).

How CCD was Started?

VG Siddhartha was born in Chikkamangaluru (Karnataka, India) in a coffee farming family who is growing coffee for more than 140 years. His family owns more than 350 acres of land and is economically sound. Siddhartha completed his M.Sc. Economics degree from the Mangalore University and later on thought to start something of his own. With this in mind, his father offered him 5 lakh rupees to push his dreams, he deposited 2 lakh rupees in his bank account and the rest 3 lakh rupees to buy some land. In 1983, he joined JM Financial and Investment Consultancy (Mumbai) as an intern and learned more about business and share market. Later, he came back to his home and started a financial firm named Sivan securities form his 2 lakh saving in the bank and also bought stocks of worth 30,000 rupees. He converted Sivan securities into banking and broking company finally came to know as Way2wealth securities. Along with this, he starts expanding his family coffee business. He later made a deal with a German company named Tchibo coffee and start supplying his farm coffee beans to them. In 1993, Siddhartha founded Amalagated bean coffee (ABC), a coffee trading and start exporting coffee and become the largest export company within the 2 years of operation. Also, he starts selling the branded coffee powder in India, he opened 25 stores in Banglore and 20 in Chennai. But due to fewer margins and high competition, he is not satisfied with these stores. Later, he came up with the idea of opening a Coffee store but this initiative is not highly appreciated by his business coworkers. As it seems highly improbable in a country like India that people will pay 25 rupees for a 5 rupees coffee cup. In 1996 he improvised this idea and pivoted it into an internet cafe coffee house which finally came to know as CCD.

Funding and Valuation:

Source: Crunchbase

Source: Crunchbase

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