Daybreak - The family office is the new family business for India's richest heirs

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Across India, many heirs are stepping away from running their inherited businesses to run family offices instead. They see investing as more flexible, more global, and less tied to daily operations.Their parents built factories but they are more interested in managing portfolios.It’s a practical shift but one that’s changing how old wealth works and what it values.What’s driving this change and does India’s next generation of uber-rich business owners still want to build anything at all?Tune in.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too? It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Ramon Ganesh, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording.

Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get an alert as soon as we release our first episode, please follow Intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. At some point, somebody just turned off the factory machines. Not because the business failed, but because the heir apparent did not want to keep them running. This particular family that I'm talking about

had been making pharmaceuticals in Gujarat for decades. Three generations, to be precise. Solid margins, but nothing flashy. And then one fine day, the grandson decided that he had had enough. He did not want to spend the next 30 years chasing suppliers and managing greasy factory floors. So the family decided to sell the business to an American pharma company around 2020, and they took the proceeds from that sale to build something new, a family office.

And today, that air runs the office full time. He is actively trading, aiming to outperform the 20% returns that once came from the factory. And his story is not unique. Across India, successors of old economy families from textiles and manufacturing to real estate and farmer are stepping away from the core business that built their wealth. Instead, they are setting up investment outfits and shifting their capital and careers into global markets. What used to be a side operation is now becoming the main act. And the idea is quite simple.

Use inherited capital to generate higher, cleaner and faster returns. No need to manage factories, labor disputes, supply chain issues. But this quiet transformation also raises an important question. If India's new generation of heirs would rather invest than build, what happens to the legacy that their families spent decades creating? Is it evolution or is it escape? Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Nidha Sharma, and I don't chase the news cycle.

Instead, every day of the week, my colleague Rachel Vargis and I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Wednesday, the 15th of October. Shift began quietly as an experiment within family empires. A few successors started managing their businesses' investment wings. But it was when these portfolios began outperforming their core companies that these families began to take notice and made the pivot permanent. Take 40-year-old Ankhut Minotia from D.

Delhi's MRLR group, a commercial leasing firm that rents real estate to fast food, fashion, and automobile brands. But after years of steady returns, Minoja found that the business was predictable. He wanted the flexibility and the faster compounding of financial markets. So, in 2024, he launched a Daisy Ventures, a family office that now accounts for a large part of the family's income. Many advisors who spoke to my colleague the Ken reporter Akruti Bhala said that this is no longer unusual.

Over the past few years, they've seen a steady rise in young inheritors turning into full-time investors. And for most of them, it is about autonomy and global exposure. For others, it is practical calculations. The effort to return ratio of traditional industries no longer adds up. And this trend is visible in the numbers as well. Between 2019 and 2024, rich Indians sent nearly $30 billion abroad under the liberalized remitence scheme or LRS, which was an increase of nearly 60%. Investments in overseas equity, debt and real estate have multiplied fivefold in that same period.

Family offices are using that window to diversify. When Chinese markets slumped in 2024, Minotia saw an opportunity. He said Indian equities were trading at about 23 times earnings. Chinese markets were closer to nine. And that difference could not be justified just by fundamentals. So, he invested through Chinese indices and exchange traded funds. Another example is Nitin Shadir, the head of green capital in Delhi. His office manages about $300 million in Africa.

assets. 75% remains in India and the rest is spread across companies like carrying United Health, Intel and Lulu Lemon. Interesting fact, by the way, Shadda's grandfather, S.L. Shagder was India's chief election commissioner from 1977 to 82. It's a good reminder that today's investors often come from deeply rooted families in business and public life. Now, the overseas exposure happens through multiple routes. Some prefer funds or funds or alternative investment funds. Others use the overseas direct investment or ODI route, which allows families to invest abroad through limited liability partnerships

up to four times their net worth. By contrast, the LRS cap is $250,000 a year, beyond which the Reserve Bank of India approval is required. For context, here is how a Mumbai-based sign described using ODII, to back a Silicon Valley startup. He said, my check was larger than what LRS allowed. Setting up an LLP abroad was the only way to do it. Meanwhile, a few have also explored the family investment fund structure

through Gujarat's Gift City. But execution has been slow. Of the seven families that applied in 2024, none have yet been approved for overseas investment. Still, the shift is unmistakable. most family officers now keep 5 to 7% of their assets abroad. For families with members living overseas, that figure can go up as high as 40%.

It is a reallocation of not just wealth, but focus away from domestic operations and towards capital management. But this new freedom or the ability to trade instead of toil also carries with it its own trade-offs. For more on that, stay tuned. Business veterans are beginning to question whether this wave of investing is progress or is it a quiet retreat. Billionaire banker Udeq Kotak, for example, believes that this shift is dulling India's entrepreneurial edge. He said that it is weakening the quote-unquote animal spirits that once pushed generations to build from scratch.

To an audience while speaking recently, he said, if someone sells that, company, they should be thinking about starting, buying or building another one. Instead, I see many saying, I'm running my family business. Now, this is a sentiment that is shared by several wealth advisors as well. They argue that turning legacy businesses into investment portfolios may preserve wealth, but it rarely creates new value. And they worry what it means for the next generation of jobs, innovation and risk-taking. But for the airs themselves, this critique kind of misses the point. Nitin Shadir, who runs the Green Capital Family Office in Delhi, says that the math simply does not justify the grind. He explained and I'm quoting, if I have 100 crore

rupees, why would I lock that money in a factory on the outskirts of Delhi? I would rather put it in a growing public company in the US or India or real estate in Europe. For him, patient capital is still productive capital. He said, if I'm earning 15 to 18% annually, my wealth doubles every 5 to 7 years. That is steady compounding growth. So it is a calm, data-driven argument that these heirs are making. It tells you that this generation of heirs is trained to see and understand spreadsheet

sheets and numbers. And the mindset extends beyond numbers as well. As one Gujarat-based air who is now living in Dubai put it, there is no glamour in the grind anymore. We would rather manage wealth efficiently than chase margins in manufacturing. So they see themselves not as abandoning legacy, but updating it by diversifying risk, globalizing capital and choosing intellectual work over operational strain. But even within the these families, not everybody agrees that this is evolution. Take Shivangi Kajaria, for example. She is a third generation member of Delhi's SBA group and is a part of her family's real estate business which also runs a family office. She believes that the new generation's quick exits

are eroding something fundamental. She said that the ease of selling your business or going public has made it too convenient to walk away. But if you've exited, shouldn't you be building something new? It is a question that many of India's business circles are now asking, quietly, but with a touch of unease. Because while family offices can deliver 15 to 18% returns, a well-run business can still yield 25 to 30%. And that gap between preservation and creation is where this debate sits. Wealth managers like Sachin-Gen of Tri-Gen wealth warn that expectations are also outpacing reality. He explained that the Nifty 50-50 index gave zero returns last year. Anyone counting on the same double-digit growth we saw earlier is being unrealistic.

Family offices that expanded into futures and options trading or private lending, often through their own NBFCs or non-banking financial companies, are holding up better though. But for others, the shift from running companies to managing money is proved. improving less stable than it looked on paper. And then there is also what is harder to measure, which is purpose. For generations, family names were built on factories, products and people. But this new generation of heirs is building balance sheets instead. Now, yes, investing is efficient, but it is also anonymous. Kotaq's concern is not just about returns. It is about identity. What happens to an economy when its builders become its bankers?

Now, the irony is that many of these heirs look up to investors like Rakes Junjongolala whose early bet on Titan turned into a fortune. But for every Junjunvala, there are countless others whose investments quietly disappeared. The market, after all, rewards timing, not inheritance. So, to be fair, India's new inheritors are not rejecting ambition. they are redefining it. The factory floors may be quiet, but their dashboards are alike with trades and charts.

So the question now is whether this shift builds something lasting or just sustains what was already built. Because one day, when the market's turn, the next generation may have to decide again, to invest or to build. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of a subscriber-only offerings

and a full subscription offers daily, long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague, Snitha Sharma and edited by Rajiv Sien.