India Family Business Consulting

Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri — TBZ — traces back to 1864, when Bhimji Zaveri opened a single store in Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar.

Five generations later, under chairman and MD Shrikant Zaveri, TBZ had grown into a 37-store pan-India jewellery business, with his daughters Binaisha and Raashi Zaveri having helped scale it over the past two decades.

This week, the family agreed to sell a 74.12% controlling stake to GRT Jewellers — a Chennai-based jewellery company itself over 60 years old — in a deal worth up to ₹1,033.71 crore. As part of the agreement, Shrikant Zaveri and both daughters will step down from the board once the deal closes.

No forced hand. No crisis. No customer walking away over succession fears. A 162-year-old family business, at a position of strength, chose to sell.

Here’s what a lot of founders get backwards: they think the point of holding on is to preserve the name — the legacy, the brand on the shopfront, the family story. But that’s not actually the goal. The goal is to preserve the wealth. And those are two very different things.

A name held onto too long, run by reluctant or absent hands, doesn’t protect wealth — it slowly erodes it. Margins soften. Talent doesn’t come. Competitors move faster. What started as a valuable asset quietly turns into a depreciating one, dressed up in sentiment.

₹1,033.71 crore, converted while the business is strong and the brand still commands a premium, is wealth preserved and multiplied. The same business, held for another decade without a clear leader, hoping a successor eventually emerges, is wealth put at risk for the sake of keeping a name on the door.

Selling your business without emotion isn’t giving something up. When there’s no clear successor — or no genuine inclination among the next generation to take it forward — a well-timed sale converts a single, illiquid, leadership-dependent asset into wealth the family can actually control, diversify, and pass on cleanly.

The founders who do this well share one trait: they stop asking “how do I keep my name on this business” and start asking “how do I protect what this business is actually worth” — even when the honest answer means someone else’s name goes on the door next.

Selling at the right time, on your own terms, isn’t losing the business. It’s the moment the wealth finally gets set free from the business.

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