The Family Office Question: what Indian business families are building, and where it breaks

How many there are, and why the counts differ

Outside GIFT City, no Indian regulator registers family offices as such, so every count is an estimate. PwC India, citing a trade press article, wrote in 2024 that the country had over 300, against 45 in 2018 [1]. EY used "over 300" when it released its joint playbook with Julius Baer in June 2025 [2]. The playbook itself says "nearly 300 in 2024" and footnotes the figure to a September 2024 news item from the India Brand Equity Foundation [3], which credits PwC [4]. The higher counts therefore appear to share one origin. Tracxn data reported by ETBFSI in December 2023 put the number at about 167 [5]. That report ranks family offices by the funding rounds they joined, so it probably counts offices active as investors in private companies, which would explain the lower figure.

SEBI does not regulate family offices as a category. On 3 October 2025 it issued a short press release calling media reports that it was considering such oversight "factually incorrect", and said it was "not examining or pursuing this matter at present" [6]. We found no later SEBI statement on the subject. Outside GIFT City, then, a family office is a private arrangement with no regulator of its own, and the rules that apply to it depend on what it does.

What a family office is for

A family office puts one team and one long-term plan over things a business family otherwise runs separately: the operating companies, the investments, the property, tax, succession and giving. Its purpose is control and continuity. Whether the money earns more is a separate question, and it belongs with a registered adviser.

The EY-Julius Baer study covered more than 25 family offices. The reason most often given for setting one up was preserving the value of assets (25%), followed by strengthening governance (13%), with managing wealth consumption and preparing the next generation at 12% each [3].

In a single-family office one family employs its own people, or assigns the work to trusted staff inside the business, and carries the whole cost. A multi-family office is a commercial firm that serves several families and spreads the cost across them.

The commercial model meets regulation sooner. SEBI's Investment Advisers Regulations define investment advice as advice on securities and include financial planning within it. An investment adviser is anyone who gives such advice for consideration as a business, and no one may act as one, or hold out as one, without registration, apart from a list of exempt persons [7]. The Portfolio Managers Regulations bar anyone from acting as a portfolio manager without a certificate of registration [8].

What the surveys say about succession

Three recent surveys asked Indian business owners and family offices about succession. Their samples differ, so the figures cannot be added together or set against each other.

PwC's 2023 India survey, as PwC reported it in 2024, found that 63% of family business leaders said they had formal governance structures in place, including shareholder agreements, family constitutions and wills [1]. Read side by side, the surveys describe owners who intend to keep the business in the family and have put less of that intention on paper. The PwC figures, from a small sample, suggest the delay often sits with the generation that still holds control.

The building blocks, as an agenda

Business families and their advisers tend to discuss the same few structures. Which to use depends on facts only the family's chartered accountant and lawyer can assess, so the table gives what each is for and what to ask. Every one of them needs both professionals before anything is set up.

A family constitution is generally not binding in law. A January 2024 note from an Indian law firm describes it as a family agreement carrying moral weight. The note says some commercial provisions can be drafted so that they bind, and that the family's intentions should also be written into the documents that govern each entity (articles of association, shareholder agreements, LLP agreements, trust deeds), with some provisions on property carried into wills [11].

The Supreme Court held on 14 December 2023, in Shakti Yezdani v Jayanand Jayant Salgaonkar, that a nominee of shares or securities does not take absolute title to them and that nomination does not override the law of succession [12]. The case concerned shares and securities under the Companies Act and the depository bye-laws; other assets have their own nomination rules. Checking that the will and each nomination agree is the lawyer's job.

The Income-tax Act, 2025 came into force on 1 April 2026 and replaced the 1961 Act [13]. A structuring memo written against the old Act should go back to the chartered accountant before the family relies on it.

The regulatory edges

A family meets these rules when outside money comes in, when money goes abroad, and when GIFT City is proposed.

SEBI's Alternative Investment Funds Regulations cover any privately pooled vehicle set up in India that collects funds from investors and invests them under a defined investment policy, and no one may act as such a fund without registration. The definition leaves out family trusts set up for the benefit of "relatives", as the Companies Act, 2013 defines that word, and holding companies as that Act defines them [14]. An investment arm that accepts a friend's or an associate's money needs a lawyer's view on which side of that definition it falls. So does one that advises or manages for other families, under the adviser and portfolio manager rules above [7][8].

For money going abroad, the Foreign Exchange Management (Overseas Investment) Rules, notified on 22 August 2022, place a resident individual's overseas investment under the ceiling of the RBI's Liberalised Remittance Scheme, unless the rules provide otherwise. An Indian entity, which the rules define as a company, body corporate, LLP or registered partnership firm, may make overseas portfolio investment of up to 50% of its net worth on its last audited balance sheet, subject to further conditions [15]. The scheme lets a resident individual remit up to USD 250,000 in a financial year, and the RBI states that it is not available to corporates, partnership firms, HUFs or trusts [16]. Wealth held in a family trust or an HUF cannot go abroad by that route.

In GIFT City, the IFSCA (Fund Management) Regulations, 2025 were notified on 19 February 2025 [17]. They provide for a family investment fund, which pools money only from a single family and is managed by a fund management entity the family sets up. The fund may be a company, a contributory trust or an LLP, and must reach and maintain a minimum investment of USD 10 million within three years of registration. "Single family" covers the lineal descendants of a common ancestor, their spouses and children, and entities they control and in which they hold a substantial economic interest [18]. The overseas investment rules allow a person resident in India to contribute to an investment fund in an IFSC as portfolio investment, within the limits in those rules [15].

For resident Indian families the route does not yet appear to be open in practice. In June 2024 the authority was reported to be waiting for clarification from the RBI and the government, and its chairperson was quoted as saying that where the money comes from India, permission from the RBI is required [19]. In August 2024 unnamed government sources were reported as saying that no regulator had stopped domestic family offices from setting up funds there [20]. On 20 April 2026 IFSCA announced the registration of what it called the first foreign family office under these regulations [21]. A trade press report the next day, relaying a Reuters report that cited an unnamed official at the regulator, said that family office structures linked to Indian business families, which had earlier received in-principle clearance, still had no final licence because of concern about outflows of Indian capital [22]. We found no public notice that this has been resolved, so a resident family should treat the route as unconfirmed until its authorised dealer bank and its lawyer say otherwise in writing.

The coordination gap

Each adviser sees a part: the chartered accountant the tax position, the lawyer the documents that firm drafted, the banker the accounts at one bank, each managing director one company. Often nobody is asked to keep the full list of what the family owns and in whose name, or the dates on which something falls due.

The accountant knows the tax position and the lawyer knows the documents. Someone has to hold the whole list, with dates.

The examples that follow are hypothetical. A constitution is signed and never carried into the articles or the shareholder agreement, where it could bind [11]. A nomination on a demat account names one child and the will names three. A son or daughter becomes resident abroad and nobody tells the chartered accountant, although residence changes the tax and foreign exchange position. Each of these can happen while every adviser does their own work correctly, because the fault lies where two pieces of work meet.

Two working documents cover most of this. The first is a map: one page listing every entity, its legal owner, who decides today, and who decides if that person cannot. The second is a calendar of filings, renewals, reviews, family and board meetings, and documents that expire. Both need one named owner, who may be a family member, a senior employee, the head of the family office or an outside coordinator. The role is administrative. It stays administrative only if the person holding it passes every tax, legal and investment question to the professional qualified to answer it.

ARKA's Private Office desk works in this coordinating role and stops there: it maps what exists, frames the decisions, brings the family's chartered accountant and lawyer to the same table and keeps the calendar. ARKA holds no SEBI or other licence, does not give legal, tax or investment advice, and does not manage or invest money. Regulated work is delivered only through licensed or registered professionals, engaged for each mandate.

Seven questions to answer first

A family can answer these on paper before any structure is discussed.

• What is owned, and in whose name? List every business, property, investment and loan with its legal owner: an individual, an HUF, a company, an LLP or a trust.
• Who decides today, and who decides if that person cannot?
• Who are the next generation, where do they live, and what do they want? Residence outside India is a question for the chartered accountant.
• What must never be sold? For many families the answer is the home, the founding business or land.
• Where is the risk sitting? Look for personal guarantees, liabilities held in the same entity as family assets, and loans between relatives that were never written down.
• Is there a will, and is it current? Check the nominations on bank accounts, demat accounts and insurance separately.
• How are family members paid, and how are disagreements settled?

What to do with this

• Answer the seven questions in writing and mark the ones nobody could answer.
• Draw the one-page map of entities, owners and decision-makers.
• Put the wills, nominations, constitution and shareholder agreements side by side and ask the lawyer whether they agree.
• Ask anyone who advises on investments or manages money for more than one family which SEBI registration they hold.
• Before any overseas or GIFT City step, get the current position in writing from the authorised dealer bank and the chartered accountant.
• Send any structuring memo dated before 1 April 2026 back to the chartered accountant.
• Name one person who owns the calendar.