Wedding Bells for DK Shivakumar’s Daughter & Late Coffee Day Owner Siddhartha’s Son? Families in Talks

Amid hectic preparations for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, Karnataka Congress president DK Shivakumar is also said to be keen to finalising his eldest daughter Aishwarya’s wedding in the near future.

And the likely groom is from another high profile family. Amartya Hegde, the son of Coffee Day Enterprises founder late VG Siddhartha, may soon beome Shivakumar’s son-in-law.

Both the families have battled some storms in 2019. Siddhartha, one of the most well-known entrepreneurs in corporate circles, a self-made millionaire and known as ‘coffee king’, had shocked the country last July when he ended his life by jumping in the Netravati river in coastal Karnataka.

Shivakumar had faced a series of income tax investigations and even spent two months in jail while his entire family, including his daughter and elderly mother, were questioned. It now looks like the two families are trying to put the past aside and have held preliminary talks for nuptials.

Siddhartha was also the son-in-law of former chief minister SM Krishna, who Shivakumar looks up to as a mentor. “We are good family friends. We have known each other for 40 years,” Shivakumar told News18.

In fact, Shivakumar was one of the last persons Siddhartha had called before he left Bengaluru on that fateful journey last year.

Asked if wedding bells are imminent, Shivakumar said it is a personal decision and he does not want to go into it at the moment. “Let them take a decision at the family level, we don’t know what the girl and boy wants,” he said.

The families belong to the powerful Vokkaliga community from different regions of Karnataka — Shivakumar from the plains of Bangalore rural, while the Hegde’s are from Malnad district of Chikmagalur nestled in the Western Ghats.

While Aishwarya, 22, is an engineer who grew up in Bengaluru and studied briefly in Singapore, Amartya, 26, also studied in the IT city before completing his MBA from the US and returning to help manage his father’s business.