The Start-up Families

Start-ups are creating wealth the same way that business families used to, but old family businesses are also evolving with the times

- K.V. KAMATH

WE NEED TO look at modern family businesses from a different perspective than the old families. A fair bit of transformation and professionalism is happening there. But they are grappling with succession in essence, how a family structure, or a family without a formal structure, runs a business moving forward. We are seeing this struggle in a number of business groups.

But the most interesting thing in terms of family businesses will be the new start-ups. All of these began as a single person starting a firm, or a husband-and-wife team, or a group of co-founders. They will now evolve.

How will this evolution progress? My answer to this is very simple. We have leapfrogged from the time when families created wealth. Yes, there are still families who have created and will continue to grow and create wealth. They have already created professional structures. Their next challenge is how to pass wealth on to the next generation. But it is the 60,000-70,000 digital start-ups that fascinate me the most. To me, they are the new business families. Most of them are bootstrapped and PE funded, and have created wealth. So, you see an ecosystem of start-up companies driving wealth.