VG Siddhartha had invested Rs 340 crore for a 20.4% stake in technology firm Mindtree, founded in 1999.

VG Siddhartha, the founder of the popular chain Cafe Coffee Day who has been missing since Monday, had recently sold his stake in IT firm Mindtree to engineering major Larsen and Toubro (L&T). It was also during the time that US beverage giant Coca-Cola was reportedly in talks with Mr Siddhartha to buy the Cafe Coffee Day chain to diversify its portfolio.

In mid-March, L&T had entered into a definitive share purchase agreement with the Chairman and Managing Director of Coffee Day Enterprises and his related entities to acquire 20.32% stake in Mindtree, a global technology services and digital transformation company.

The entities included Coffee Day Trading and Coffee Day Enterprises.

L&T purchased this stake at a price of Rs 980 per share aggregating to about Rs 3,269 crore.

Mindtree was founded by ten information technology professionals in 1999 and became the fastest IT services company to cross 100 million dollars in annual revenues during sixth year of its operations.

Mr Siddhartha had invested Rs 340 crore for a 20.4% stake in it.

The company's initial public offering (IPO) was oversubscribed more than 100 times in 2007. Mindtree crossed the one billion revenue mark in 2018-19.

Before that in 1996, VG Siddhartha had opened the country's first coffee cafe called Cafe Coffee Day on Bengaluru's Brigade Road which now has 1,751 outlets in 250 cities in India, Austria, Czech Republic, Malaysia, Nepal and Egypt.

Mr Siddhartha, son of a coffee plantation owner, was born in Karnataka's Chikkamagaluru city. After completing his masters degree at Mangalore University, he had started his career in 1983 as a management trainee at JM Financial under Mahendra Kampani.

However, reports say the 58-year-old businessman had piled up debts totalling over Rs 3,000 crore. VG Siddhartha was looking at a valuation of Rs 8,000 crore to Rs 10,000 crore in his talks with Coca-Cola to clear the debts and earn some retirement benefits as well.