He points out that globally, many legacy businesses are now professionally managed rather than being run by their founding families.
“Even Larsen & Toubro were names, two people’s names. Goldman Sachs were people’s names. It’s not that there is anybody from the Goldman family or the Sachs family running Goldman Sachs now, it’s just that they have professionalised in that sense,” he said, weighing in on the debate over whether heirs should take a more hands-on role in businesses.
Shenoy sees this as a necessary evolution, arguing that capital should flow to those with the hunger to build and grow, rather than being restricted to inherited businesses.
Uday Kotak, one of India’s top banker, recently voiced concerns that the next generation of billionaire families is prioritising wealth management over building new businesses. He sees this as a possible outcome of a system that increasingly rewards capital over hard work and innovation. Harsh Goenka, Chairman of RPG Group, echoed similar views, observing that many young heirs prefer a comfortable lifestyle, steady investment income, and high-profile socialising over the challenges of running a business.
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Devina Mehra, Founder, Chairperson, and MD at First Global, who joined the conversation, views this shift as part of a broader historical pattern.
She pointed out that businesses rarely sustain beyond a few generations, either due to internal family dynamics or an inability to adapt to changing market conditions.
“The original Sensex had only one young company, which was Indian Hotels. All others were decades-old companies, and many of them became irrelevant, some because of the family thing, others because they could not adapt to the changing times,” she noted.
Shenoy also questioned why the responsibility of building the next wave of industries should fall on business heirs at all.
He believes that first-generation entrepreneurs, rather than the children of the wealthy, are more likely to create the next set of transformative companies.
“The children of those who have become rich are now investing in those companies, calling them startup investing and then also spending the money, which is both, I think are great things, because if you don’t have the hunger, at least, you give the money to the person who has the hunger.”
Rather than seeing this trend as a problem, Shenoy argues that it is a natural progression. He sees no issue with heirs choosing to invest rather than directly running businesses, as long as they channel capital into ventures that drive economic growth. What matters, he says, is that money keeps flowing to those who are willing to take risks and build something new.
“We will always think less of the next generation. There were a number of people, big businessmen, who we thought of as people who may not be able to run their parents companies when their parents passed away and so on. But turns out, some of them were actually quite capable,” he added.
