Family Businesses: The Emerging Landscape 1990 - 2015

The year 1991 was a momentous year in the contemporary economic history of India. It ushered in a new dawn to the Indian economy with the unleashing of sweeping economic reforms across sectors of the economy. The widespread reforms were expected to bring about significant transformations in the structure, operations, allocation of resources (including capital) and competitiveness of the businesses in India. Industrial activity, in the otherwise agrarian India, started in the late nineteenth century by traders looking at alternative ways of making money. They took on the mighty British and Anglo Saxon agencies and emerged as the most dominating economic powers in the Indian Economy by the early 1950s. The period of license-quota raj stifled the growth of these economic powerhouses, which were mostly privately held family businesses, in the 1960s and 1970s. However, being protected from competition in an insular economy, they continued to be a dominant force in many of the traditional industries where the State-owned enterprises and Multi-national companies had a negligible presence.