The Rise Of Malavika Hegde: Leading Café Coffee Day To Success
There are moments of despair and agony when you feel an impenetrable wall of misery caving in on you, and you are choking with pain, and still, there is no way to find even a glimpse of hope to break through that unending abyss of pain, or even scream for help.
These moments are indeed very challenging when you seem to lose your sanity and succumb to the loss, but these moments are also the times of self-discovery when you learn to cultivate your innermost strengths and unfaltering determination to explore all your inert potential and use all your resourcefulness to find a life of purpose. Once you are ready to see through the struggle with a renewed sense of vitality, that moment of strength and spirit is when you rise from the ashes of loss and adversity and emerge victorious by embracing new beginnings.
This is exactly what happened to malavika hegde, who had just lost her husband, and before she could recuperate from this tragic loss, she had to take over the reins of her husband’s dreams which were about to crush soon.
When VG Siddhartha, the founder of India’s largest coffee shop chain Café Coffee Day committed suicide in the year 2019, unable to take any more financial pressure to sustain a profitable business model for the company, it did not just rock the world for all the customers who used to hang out regularly at the outlets of CCD, but also the entire nation. As his body was recovered from the Netravati river near Bangalore, the entire world seemed to collapse for malavika hegde and her two sons.
As she read the heart-wrenching suicide note from her husband admitting that he never intended to cheat the equity partners of CCD, but was ready to take all responsibilities for failing as an entrepreneur, malavikadecided that she would not let her husband go with all the blames that he had put upon himself.
Deciding to make a new start and keeping grief aside, malavika hegde took over the position of the CEO of Café Coffee Enterprise Ltd in the year 2020. The first thing that she did was write a heartfelt note to all the employees of her company assuring them that fighting to save this dream of her husband was worth all the trouble and if they support her, she would successfully save the company from going bankrupt and bring it to a more stable stature.
Her next step was to close down all the CCD outlets that were not making much profits and remove the numerous coffee vending machines stationed at different organizations so that more money could be saved by closing these unyielding operations.
Malavika has always shared the dream of Café Coffee Day together with her husband and just because he left the enterprise midway, she could not let this legacy of her husband die as well. She put all her best efforts into reorienting all the employees and getting more investors on board which visibly brought down the company’s debt from a whopping INR 7,200 crore to INR 3,100 crore within a very short time.
Being a nature enthusiast malavika hegde has a 20,000-acre coffee plantation to her name which produces exotic high-quality Arabica coffee beans. Café Coffee Enterprise Limited has tasted incredible success by exporting these coffee beans under her leadership.
What makes her a remarkable entrepreneur is the decision to not raise the prices of the CCD items which would have been an easy way out to increase profit. It was a very farsighted decision as she won the empathy of the customers instead of incensing them with an unprecedented spike in price.
As a result, the number of current functional outlets of CCD has reduced to around 572, with almost 36,000 coffee vending machines currently installed at different companies and their gigantic market debt has reduced immensely, currently standing at a mere INR 465.25 crore in 2023.
Malavika hegde had been making the headlines since her decision to lead Café Coffee Day back to the success point where it was since its inception but for the ones who know very little about her, malavika hegde has always been a part of the coffee business ever since she married V G Siddhartha. Although malavika was a board member of the company and had 4% of equity shares in her name she was not actively participating in the regular operations of CCD.
Born in the year 1969 in Bangalore, malavika is the elder daughter of eminent Indian politician, Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna and Mrs Prema Krishna who is a social worker. Having completed her education from a local Bengaluru School and acquiring an engineering degree from Bengaluru University Malavika’s first brush with business was when she got married to V G Siddhartha in the year 1991.
Since then, she has been the steady support system for him as one after other outlets of CCD were opened across India, and her husband was popularly known as the Coffee King of India, until it all ended on 31st July 2019 when she was called to verify an unidentified body retrieved from the Netravati river.
When Café Coffee Day was about to breathe its last and the passing away of its founder was definitely going to put that last nail in the coffin, the decision of malavika hegde to revive the company has been interpreted differently by people across the nation. While for some people it was an extraordinary turnaround for a woman who had just lost her husband while some people appreciated this calculated move as a successful entrepreneur. Some people believed that malavika hegde was the true partner of VG Siddhartha who was determined to not let her husband’s dream die.
Nevertheless, among all these interpretations, one fact stands out that the meteoric rise of malavika Hegde and the subsequent reemergence of Café Coffee Day from its ashes has successfully scripted a remarkable story of courage, determination, and success, which has inspired millions of young women and entrepreneurs of India.
As years pass on, Café Coffee Day will continue to flourish and expand its operations with malavika hegde at its helm but the path of self-discovery and embracing adversity as the best opportunity to rewrite history that she has set will be followed by many entrepreneurs to come.