Late Cafe Coffee Day founder VG Siddhartha’s biopic in works

Production companies T-Series and Almighty Motion Picture announced on Friday that they have acquired the adaptation rights of the upcoming book Coffee King: The Swift Rise and Sudden Death of Cafe Coffee Day Founder V.G Siddhartha.

The book, written by investigative journalists Rukmini BR and Prosenjit Datta, will be published by Pan Macmillan (India).

T-Series and Prabhleen Kaur Sandhu of Almighty Motion Picture in association with Karma Media Entertainment has acquired the adaptation rights from Anish Chandy of Labyrinth Literary Agency.

Siddhartha, whose chain of cafes helped make coffee a lifestyle beverage and brought in latte, cappuccino, Americano and espresso into the urban Indian lexicon, was found dead in 2019 aged 59. His body was found in the Netravati river in Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka.

Bhushan Kumar, chairman and managing director, T-Series said the team is elated to bring his story to the screen.

“Everyone is acquainted about Cafe Coffee Day as a brand, we are quite ecstatic to bring this intriguing biopic of the man who co-founded the country’s largest retail-chain,” Kumar said in a statement.

Sandhu said Cafe Coffee Day is one of India’s most beloved brands, and their aim is to bring all the aspects its architect Siddhartha’s life on screen.

“This is a deeply-researched book which gives us a lot of scope to bring out unknown facets of this great entrepreneur’s life,” Sandhu added.

Rukmini BR said Siddhartha’s story is full of “thrilling twists and turns”, while co-writer Datta dubbed him as the most “humble businessman as well as an exceedingly ambitious one”.

“We are capturing this contradiction in both the book and on screen,” Datta added.

Producer Shaailesh R Singh of Karma Media and Entertainment said the biopic would be one of the most exciting projects of his career.