Second-generation takeover of a 30-year-old services firm. The numbers were healthy. The structure wasn’t.
The founder had built a specialist services firm over 30 years. Around 140 people, roughly ₹80Cr in revenue, profitable across every cycle, and known in its sector for work that was slow, careful, and expensive in a way clients were happy to pay for. Two of his three children worked in the business. The eldest ran operations and was the heir apparent. The second ran a support function well. The third had built a separate career entirely.
The founder was 64 and tired. He wanted to step back within two years. The handover on paper was simple. In practice, three things were quietly broken. The eldest had authority by title but not by decision right, because every significant call still passed through the founder’s office. There was no board, no formal governance, and no shareholder agreement between the siblings. And half the senior team had been there longer than the eldest and were not sure, in a private conversation, whether they would work for her.
We interviewed 22 people across the business and the family over three weeks. What came out was that the succession question was three separate questions, and the family had been trying to solve them as one. There was a governance question, about who decides what. There was a capability question, about whether the incoming leader had the right team around her. And there was a family question, about what the other two siblings were owed, legally and emotionally.
Most family successions fail not because the next generation is unready. They fail because three different problems are being argued as one.
We proposed separating them cleanly, running them on different tracks, and not letting any one of them block the others. The founder agreed on a Tuesday. The eldest, who had been sceptical of bringing in outside help, agreed on the Thursday after. That was the beginning of the engagement.
Track one was governance. We set up a small board, two independent directors and the founder as chair, and wrote a decision rights matrix that defined which calls sat with the CEO, which with the board, and which with the shareholders. The founder stopped making operational decisions within four months. That was the hardest part of the engagement, and we spent a lot of time in his office making sure it stuck.
Track two was capability. We ran a quiet assessment of the top 15 roles, identified four gaps, and made four senior hires over the 18 months. Two were from inside, promoted with clear development plans. Two were external. The eldest led those hiring decisions with our support. By the end, she had a team she had chosen.
Track three was the family. We worked with external legal counsel to draft a shareholder agreement that transitioned 100 percent of equity to the three siblings on a defined schedule, with different rights for the operating and non-operating shareholders. We did not mediate the family conversations. We made sure the conversations had structure, numbers, and a timeline, which is usually what is missing.
Eighteen months in, the founder is on the board, not in the business. The eldest is the CEO, in title and in practice. All three siblings are shareholders under an agreement that has already survived one hard conversation about dividends without fracturing. The business grew 11 percent in the first full year under new leadership, which is not a headline number, but it is a quiet one, and quiet is what you want in a handover year.
We stayed on a light retainer for the first year post-handover, mostly for board meetings and the occasional tough phone call. That retainer has since ended. The business is now, properly, theirs.