Family Offices In India Need To Operate Like VC Funds To Ace Startup Investment: Jai Rupani

Amid the growing need to increase the share of domestic capital flowing into homegrown startups, Jai Rupani, the head of Dinesh Hinduja Family Office, has called on family offices in the country to take up the mantle.

Speaking at Inc42’s MoneyX 2024 event, Rupani today (September 26) said that family offices in India need to operate like venture capital funds and have smart teams to ace startup investment.

Rupani was joined on stage by Apurva Salarpuria, managing director of Salarpuria Group, Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, cofounder of Venture Catalysts++ & 100Unicorns and Sanil Sacha, founding partner at Huddle Ventures.

During the panel discussion, Sharma threw light on how family offices can help VC funds and their portfolio companies. He further said that the unique selling point of family offices is opening up business opportunities for startups and helping them secure funding.

As per Inc42 data, Indian startups cumulatively raised $5.3 Bn in the first half (H1) of 2024 as against $5.4 Bn raised in the first six months of 2023. But this success hides behind a weakness: a majority of this funding came from foreign investors. 

For the world’s third largest startup ecosystem, such dependency on foreign capital is alarming.

Another Inc42 data said that India is currently home to over 300 family offices, with their investment in homegrown startups having grown at a CAGR of 42% at seed stage and 71% at growth stage between 2019 to 2022. Since 2014, Indian family offices have backed more than 200 startups.

They have also increased their share in deal participation in Indian startups, particularly in two core sectors, fintech and enterprise tech, at a CAGR of 62% and 38%, respectively, during the same period.

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