India@70: Corporate India remains a family-owned enterprise

Tata, Birla, Mahindra have been able to maintain their presence in the league table over the years

India has gone through many cycles of economic growth since its independence from British rule in 1947. But one thing has remained constant through the economy in the last seven decades: the dominance of family-owned businesses in India.

Most of the country’s largest companies across sectors continue to be family owned despite the rise of government-owned and institution-owned enterprises in the last 70 years.
 

Starting as an open market economy, India became a planned economy by the mid-1950s where private enterprise was forced to play second fiddle to the newly established public sector. Things came full circle in 1991 when