India Family Business Consulting

A Delhi court recently said something that should worry and, therefore, awaken family businesses.

The Sunjay Kapoor family dispute, it observed, had the potential to pale the Mahabharata.

Let that sink in.

The Mahabharata, a war that destroyed an entire dynasty, wiped out generations, and left a kingdom in ruins, was being used as a reference point for a modern Indian business family.

And at the centre of it all?
Not a shortage of documents.
A shortage of conversations.

Every family business has files. Wills. Shareholder agreements. Partnership deeds. Neatly organised. Lawyer-approved. Safely stored.

And yet, when the founder stepped back, everything fell apart.
Because no document had ever answered the questions that actually mattered.

Who leads when two brothers disagree? What happens when the daughter-in-law wants a role, and the son doesn’t know how to say no? When does the founder step back from being the final decision-maker? How will the wealth be distributed?

These are not legal questions. They are human ones.

And humans don’t resolve them with signatures. They resolve them with conversations. Honest, uncomfortable, long-overdue conversations.
The founder tells his son; I don’t think you’re ready yet before it becomes a courtroom crisis.

The patriarch who finally asks his daughter; do you actually want this business, or did you never feel you had a choice?

The siblings who sit down and say, here is what I need, here is what I fear, here is what I cannot accept.

The founder explained the intent of his will to the family members.

These conversations feel risky.
Avoiding them is riskier.
Because what gets left unsaid in one generation becomes a dispute in the next.

Succession planning is not a documentation exercise.
It is a relationship exercise.
The documents follow. The conversation must come first.

In my book Breaking Free, I explore why the real work of succession happens not in the lawyer’s office, but at the dining table.

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