Body of VG Siddhartha, founder of CCD, found on the banks of Netravati river in Mangaluru

The body of Cafe Coffee Day founder V G Siddhartha, who went missing, was found on Wednesday in the Netravati river in Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka after 36 hours of intense search, officials said.

The body had washed ashore near Ullal and was fished out by local fishermen.

It was a fisherman on Tuesday, who had claimed to have seen a man, likely to be the CCD founder, jumping into the Netravathi river from the same bridge on Monday evening, police had said, almost 24 hours after his driver raised an alarm about the missing businessman.

Two days prior to his disappearance, the 60-year-old had left behind a note to his employees that revealed he was in deep debt.

The mountain of debt was impairing his business as working capital requirements could not be met. It led him to sale his stakes in IT firm Mindtree that gave him some room to manoeuvre.

Mangalore MLA U T Khader said friends and relatives have confirmed that the body is of Siddhartha.

Earlier, police said the body, which appeared to be of Siddhartha, was yet to be identified by his family.

"A body has been found, which appears to be of him. Final confirmation has to be done by the family," deputy commissioner of Dakshina Kannada district Sasikanth Senthil told PTI.

Mangalore Commissioner of Police Sandeep Patil said the body has been kept at Wenlock Hospital for further formalities.

Siddhartha, the founder of India's largest coffee chain, went missing mysteriously on Monday night en route to the coastal city of Mangaluru.

Teams of National Disaster Response Force, Coast Guard, Home Guard, fire services and coastal police scoured the waters under a bridge across the swollen Nethravathi river, where the 60-year old was reportedly last seen, to trace the coffee tycoon.

Siddhartha, also the son-in-law of former Karnataka chief minister and BJP leader S M Krishna, was last seen near the bridge in Kotepura area on Monday night, police said.

Siddhartha had left Bengaluru for Sakleshpur in Hassan district in a car on Monday afternoon, but on the way had asked his driver to go towards Mangaluru, police said.

On reaching the bridge, he got off the car and told his driver he was going for a walk.

A fisherman had on Tuesday claimed that he saw someone jumping off the bridge.

with IANS and PTI inputs