Greasing the machines, settling labour disputes, or dealing with the family clerk is not third- and fourth-generation successors’ idea of a good life. Their thinking is simple: there are easier ways of putting their capital to use. Which is why a lot of them are turning to full-time investing over running their family businesses. 

In fact, over the last few years, wherever there’s a large legacy business, there’s usually a family office. What is new is young heirs pivoting to investing as their main, and sometimes only, source of livelihood.

Take Ankit Minocha, 40, a third-gen successor of his family’s commercial-leasing business MRLR Group in Delhi. The company helps fast-food, fashion, and automobile companies rent real estate. But for Minocha, this “steady” business soon paled in comparison to the “strong growth” alternative of investing. 

After years of managing the investments wing of his family business, he set up a family office, Adezi Ventures, in 2024—which now makes up a large part of the family’s total income.

He’s not alone. Over a dozen family offices, wealth advisors, and investment professionals said they’re seeing a rising number of youngsters going all in on family offices. Their reasons for it may be varied—freedom to travel around the world, higher returns, diversifying beyond gold and real estate—but their goal is the same. To sidestep the daily grind of their predecessors in pursuit of faster, smarter returns.

Many are pursuing investments abroadThe Economic TimesIndia’s ultra rich are diversifying wealth with private equity, AIFs and global bets. For instance, between 2019 and 2024, outward remittance by the rich via the LRSLiberalised Remittance Scheme or LRS is a set of RBI guidelines that allow resident Indians to freely remit money abroad up to a limit of $250,000 for a variety of purposes scheme jumped around 60% to over $29 billion, according to banking regulator Reserve Bank of India. Break down the data, and you’ll see that investments in equity, debt, and real estate have shot up 5X in six years.

But then there are billionaire entrepreneurs like Uday Kotak who thinkThe Times of IndiaAnimal spirits fading as next gen families focus on investments - Uday Kotak this shift is dampening the “animal spirits” of entrepreneurship in the Indian economy.