VG Siddhartha came from a coffee-growing family, which owned 15,000 acres of coffee estate in Chikmagalur in Karnataka. He launched the first Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) outlet on Brigade Road in Bengaluru. The chain currently has 1,750 outlets and over 60,000 vending machines spread over Nepal, Malaysia, Czech Republic, and Egypt, aside from 245 cities in India. The 58-year-old entrepreneur was in talks with Coca-Cola to sell considerable stake in his coffee chain. The deal was supposed to be closed by the end of March 2020. The coffee baron had reportedly been cornered by a cash crunch after the default by infrastructure lending giant IL&FS triggered a liquidity crisis in the country. Siddhartha had to sell his 20.4% stake in the IT firm Mindtree to L&T against the wishes of Mindtree's founders who Siddhartha had backed since 1999.