How easy is it to become an entrepreneur in India if your family has a strong entrepreneurial heritage? The conventional wisdom is that you have a massive head start. Your family’s reputation, connections, brands, and capital are all at your disposal.

If your family’s name is well-known in Indian business circles, you gain immediate acceptance and respect. Your family will provide you with a first-rank education, wise counsel, introductions, and trusted advisors. You have the opportunity to start a business at a much younger age than most because of all these advantages. Or do you?

Family businesses are the bedrock of almost every economy in the world. Even in regions with advanced capital markets and a deep pool of professional managers such as the US or Europe, the vast majority of companies are started, owned and operated by sole proprietors and/or their families. A significant proportion of companies listed on the world’s biggest stock exchanges are controlled by one family or a few families, and in many cases the founder’s family is still active in daily management.

For centuries in India, the duty of children born into a commercial family has been to carry on their father’s work. Certain regions and jatis are famous for spawning one generation after another of children who build upon what their parents bequeathed them. A popular theme in fiction and non-fiction is the conflict between passion and duty that arises when children have no interest in their family business but, nonetheless, feel compelled to carry on the family tradition.

Certainly, carrying on in one’s parents' footsteps is still considered the norm by many in modern India, but many of today’s entrepreneurs who were born into enterprising families are charting their own course. Consider Shamit Bhartia. His grandfather, ML Bhartia, established his family’s business in Calcutta shortly after partition, focusing on basic manufacturing. Shamit’s father Shyam Bhartia is the co-founder, Chairman and Managing Director of Jubilant Organosys, a leading pharmaceutical company based in Noida, and his mother Shobhana is the vice-chairperson and editorial director of the Hindustan Times. Upon returning from the US in his mid-20’s, Shamit helped start the Monday to Sunday hypermarket chain in Bangalore, which is now a thriving division of Jubilant Organosys. Each generation of this family has pursued a different opportunity in a sector and region that seemed most promising at the time the founder was ready to start a company, instead of seeing his mission as merely perpetuating his inheritance.

What are some of the different paths that the entrepreneurial scions of India’s business families are pursuing today? Although there are many avenues taken by entrepreneurs whose parents were themselves entrepreneurs we profile in this article three different paths: diversifying the family business; starting a new company that may someday join the family enterprise; and striking off independently.

Sarvesh Shahra: Diversifying the family business 26 year old Sarvesh Shahra was born at about the time when his father and uncle created Indore-based Ruchi Soya Industries (www.ruchisoya.com), now at the heart of the Ruchi Group conglomerate. Ruchi Soya, whose managing director is Sarvesh’s father Dinesh Shahra, focuses on edible oil, soya foods, and specialty fats and is especially well-known in India for its flagship brand Nutrela. “Nutrela is a heritage brand, a house-hold name in India and the leader in its product categories,” says Shahra. “I have started a new venture which will focus on the health and wellness offering. I plan to take the Nutrela business beyond the original family business by offering different categories of health foods and beverages under this brand.”

“I wanted to unlock the brand value in the family business by offering a line of health food and beverages that provide value-added food in the premium, mid-to-low and nascent consumer categories. Growth in the packaged foods business is about 35-40% per annum in India, and consumers today are enjoying and are ready for such products." – SARVESH SHAHRA

Sarvesh Shahra has taken charge of a separate company within the Ruchi family and is independently responsible for it. “The new venture will focus on the health and wellness offering,” he says. “Until now the family business never took advantage of the health benefits of soya when marketing the Soya line of food products. We plan to make Nutrela the dominant force in the Health and Wellness business and unlock the value within the brand via this brand extension into new upcoming food product categories.”

As one of India’s leading agri-business and food companies, Ruchi Soya Industries has identified the country’s Health & Wellness (H&W) opportunity as a major area for growth for its value-added food business. Shahra’s venture plans to open up this market for Ruchi starting with functional health beverages that are rich in calcium and protein. He then plans to add healthy snacks, nutritional supplements, health cereals, and nutraceuticals under the Nutrela brand with new individual product category brands. He explains, “We will use high quality raw and packaging materials for our products, and are setting up an entirely new pan-India sales and distribution network to sell these products in modern retail and A-class outlets. Our overall goal is to provide ‘nutrition you can enjoy.’”

Entrepreneurs usually perform best when they bring passion to a business, and Shahra exudes enthusiasm when he explains why he chose to lead this venture. “I studied in Singapore and US and was exposed to health foods at a very early age, so I always knew I wanted to do something in this area,” he says. “I’ve always lead a healthy lifestyle myself. I practice yoga and exercise regularly and hence I wanted to develop products which reflected my values.”

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written by NARAYAN GHOSH, August 24, 2008

i am narayan ghosh , from kolkata , i am a it engineer , i want to work with you ,

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