According to the Julius Baer & EY Indian family office playbook, in 2018 there were roughly 45 Family Offices in India; by 2024/25, that number had grown to nearly 300, with most of them being Single Family Offices. The same report estimates that mid- and large Indian Family Offices collectively managed INR70,000 crore in assets in 2024, projected to grow 1.5 times over three years at a 14% compound annual growth rate.

There are three forces driving that growth.

Wealth creation at the very top. The playbook notes that India now has more than 200 billionaires, third-highest globally after the US and China, and controlling close to US$1 trillion in wealth. Knight Frank's Wealth Report 2026 puts India's ultra-high-net-worth population (assets above US$30 million) at 19,877 in early 2026, up 63% from just over 12,000 in 2022, and projects it will reach 25,217 by 2031. Per Knight Frank's Wealth Sizing Model, India now has the world's sixth-largest UHNWI population, with Mumbai alone accounting for more than a third of the domestic total.

IPOs and promoter monetisation. India's primary markets have become the dominant liquidity event for founders. The Julius Baer–EY playbook reports that Offer-for-Sale now makes up the majority of IPO proceeds, meaning most IPO capital is promoters and early investors cashing out, not fresh investment. That liquidity is frequently the seed capital for a new Family Office, and increasingly the two events happen in close succession.

A maturing private markets ecosystem. SEBI-registered Alternative Investment Funds, the vehicle of choice for Family Offices investing in private equity, venture capital and private credit, have scaled fast, with SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey noting at the IVCA Conclave 2026 that cumulative commitments have more than doubled over three years. The Julius Baer–EY playbook notes that Family Offices are an increasingly important part of that capital base, sitting alongside banks and insurers as domestic Limited Partners in a market historically dominated by a handful of global fund managers.

Capital is outpacing structure

The interesting part of this story isn't the growth rate; it is what the growth is exposing. The Julius Baer–EY playbook finds that many Indian family offices now direct 40–45% of their portfolios toward alternatives: private equity, venture capital, private credit…etc. That is a meaningfully more complex mandate, and it is landing on structures that, per the report, remain largely individual-led, with the founder or patriarch retaining concentrated, informal decision-making authority.

That works while the business is simple, but from our experience it will become a liability once the office starts running a diversified, cross-border portfolio. The playbook's own survey data captures this gap: over 70% of Family Offices acknowledge the need for governance-led processes, such as investment committees, audit trails, formal reporting…yet many still run on spreadsheets and email threads.

One distinction the report draws is worth holding onto: ownership succession is not the same as leadership succession. Ownership transfers cleanly through inheritance or a trust. Leadership requires capability, preparedness, and an actual handover plan, and families that conflate the two usually discover the gap only when it is too late to close gracefully.

The talent question

Like we have discussed many times before, governance frameworks are only as good as the people running them. The Julius Baer–EY playbook points to a real shift toward dedicated CIOs, CFOs and risk professionals, supported by external advisors in tax, cybersecurity and compliance, which is a positive move away from the "trusted family friend" model of a decade ago. The trade-off, however, is that these mandates often blur boundaries corporate roles don’t; this means advisors are expected to navigate complicated family dynamics alongside the investment brief, which not every strong CIO candidate is equipped for.

This is where governance and talent converge. A strong CIO hired into an undefined mandate, with no investment committee, no clear decision rights, no boundary between family and business, will ultimately find themselves struggling to stay, regardless of pay. A Family Office with a genuine governance stack, by contrast, offers something private equity funds often can't: real ownership over a long-term mandate without fund-cycle pressure. That's compelling, but only where the structure exists to make good on it.

At Agreus, this is where we spend most of our time: helping Family Offices get the governance structure and the senior hires right, before the gap between capital and capability becomes a costly one. If you are building out a Family Office in India or any other emerging markets in the world, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team to talk through your needs.