When India Inc scions branched out on their own

There are many examples of offspring who left the family business to pursue their own interests

Jalaj Dani of Asian Paints is not the only member of an Indian business family to strike out on his own. Dani, a third-generation scion of one of the founding families of Asian Paints, has stepped down from his position as president, international at Asian Paints to pursue his own interests.

India Inc incidentally is replete with examples of sons and daughters who chose to go their own way even as their parents set up huge businesses, many of them names to reckon with in the Indian marketplace. One is Marico chairman Harsh Mariwala's children - Rishabh and Rajvi - who opted out of the company few years ago.

Rishabh is busy with his venture called Soap Opera N More, which deals with handcrafted designer soaps, while Rajvi is into sociological research. Another scion of a business family who is busy with his own venture is Sasha Mirchandani, son of Onida group founder- chairman Gulu Mirchandani. Sasha stepped out of the family business of manufacturing and marketing consumer durables over a decade ago and has been an early-stage investor since, running his own venture called Kae Capital.

His investments include Fractal Analytics, Inmobi, Healthkart, Myntra, Greendust, Cloudbyte, Canvera and Mettl.He also sits on the boards of Hathway Cable and Datacom Limited, Ador Welding and Mumbai Angels Venture Mentors among others.

His cousin, Akshay Mansukhani, son of Onida group co-promoter Vijay Mansukhani, has also ventured on his own, running  a hedge fund called Malabar Capital.  

Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy's daughter Akshat also opted to  strike out on her own, pursuing a career in finance and marketing, working for firms such as Deloitte, Unilever and US-based venture capital major Siderian, instead of joining the family business of software exports. She eventually abandoned all of this to pursue her true calling in fashion.

Her brother Rohan, who was executive assistant at the chairman's office, when Narayana Murthy returned to Infosys in 2013, stepped down from this position a year later. He is, however, associated with Catamaran Ventures, a  venture capital fund headed by his father.