New Delhi, Dec. 20 -- On 29 July 2019, V.G. Siddhartha, founder of the Cafe Coffee Day chain and sundry other businesses, jumped off a bridge into the swirling waters of the Netravati River in Mangaluru. It was a tragic end to a life that had promised so much.

While the question of what finally prompted the mild-mannered man to take such an extreme step remains unanswered, some clues on the factors that led to it are available in Coffee King: The Swift Rise and Sudden Death of Cafe Coffee Day Founder V.G. Siddhartha, a new book by Rukmini Rao and Prosenjit Datta. That despite a five-year-long research exercise, the authors, seasoned journalists both, fail to uncover where the money trail ended, is a reflection of the complex web of busin...