Passing the Baton: Next-Generation Involvement in Indian Family Businesses

Author(s)	Aksh Kapoor
Country	India
Abstract	Family firms in India account for McKinsey's estimated more than three-quarters of the country's GDP‚ and accounted for 64․5 per cent of the total Indian market capitalization‚ as of December 2020․ In India‚ only 21 per cent of family firms have succession planning effectively documented‚ according to PwC's 2019 Family Business Survey․ In the global PwC survey‚ 36 per cent of Indian companies that took part reported having no discernible succession plan‚ compared to 28 per cent globally․ This paper examines how Indian business families decide whether, when and how the next generation enters, and argues that the decision is poorly captured by the planning-document framing that dominates consultancy research. It reviews the succession literature from Handler onwards, examines the socioemotional wealth explanation for why families retain control at a cost, and corrects a survival statistic that is quoted constantly and misquoted almost as often. It then proposes an interview-based study of six to ten Indian business families, including the author's own, designed to record how the conversation about entry actually happens rather than whether a document exists.
Keywords	family business, succession, next generation, socioemotional wealth, governance, India
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 5, September-October 2026
Published On	2026-10-08

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