India's billionaire heirs are choosing stock trading over sweat, wealth management over innovation, and luxury networking over leadership, sparking concern among industry leaders. Economist and author Sanjeev Sanyal has now joined the debate, saying that billionaire heirs are becoming too soft.
"I am glad that the business elite has woken up to the real danger that their heirs are becoming too soft," Sanyal said, responding to RPG Group Chairperson Harsh Goenka’s recent scathing opinion piece.
"Instead of leveraging their wealth to take bigger risks, they create 'family offices' and spend their time fighting with their cousins over the family art collection. Their parents need to insist on their heirs being on the shop floor rather than doing Ivy League MBAs that are no more than finishing schools," he added.
Goenka, in a column, argued that young business heirs are abandoning traditional business responsibilities. Citing banker Uday Kotak’s recent concerns, he noted that instead of rolling up their sleeves and building businesses, heirs are treating stock trading and fund management as full-time jobs.
"There was a time when being born into a business family meant inheriting responsibility before wealth," Goenka wrote. He described how earlier generations started from factory floors, understood supply chains, and worked their way up, whereas today’s heirs prioritise passive income, vacations, and luxury networking over real business acumen.
Goenka painted a sharp contrast between past and present: Then: Waking up at 6 a.m., working 12-hour days, and plotting market domination. Now: Holding champagne flutes, managing hedge fund brunches, and expensing Davos ski trips as business meetings. "No labour strikes, no messy operations, no innovation headaches. Just a steady inflow of wealth, managed through mutual funds, private equity, and hedge fund brunches in London," he remarked.
The conversation was triggered by Kotak Bank founder Uday Kotak, who recently criticised the trend of young heirs choosing financial investments over real business operations. "What concerns me is that many in this generation are taking the easy way out, especially in the post-Covid world. They claim to be managing family offices and investments, trading in the stock market, allocating funds to mutual funds, and treating it as a full-time job," Kotak said at the Chasing Growth 2025 investor event.
He questioned why individuals at 35 or 40 were not contributing more directly to the economy. "I would love to see this generation be hungry for success and build operational businesses. Even today, I firmly believe that the next generation must work hard and create businesses rather than becoming financial investors too early in life," Kotak asserted.
Goenka also called out the irony of heirs idolising Elon Musk while refusing to adopt his relentless work ethic. "They love quoting him, but could never survive even a week of his gruelling schedule," he wrote. Similarly, Goenka mocked their dismissive attitude toward industry stalwarts like Narayana Murthy and SN Subrahmanyan, who advocate 70-90-hour work weeks. "They roll their eyes at 'boomers' who talk about working long hours. But how many of them have built anything meaningful?" he asked.