How women in family businesses are battling entrenched biases and the old guard

Back when she was in primary school, Priti Sureka had to write an essay about what she wanted to be when she grew up. “I didn’t know there was a word like businesswoman, so I wrote I wanted to be a businessman,” she laughs. That clarity was perhaps a result of the subconscious training she had received from her father R.S. Agarwal, co-founder of Kolkata-headquartered Emami. Agarwal would often start work early while she was getting ready to go to school and would discuss different aspects of the business with her. This eventually led her to joining the company in 1996, when she was just 24.

Thirty years later, Sureka is a Whole-time Director with the consumer goods company and has been credited with reviving and growing the flagship Boroplus brand, as well as acquiring Kesh King to foray into the haircare segment. In 2025, she was elected President of the Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry, making her the first woman to hold this position in the MCCI’s 125-year history.  

However, it was not smooth sailing. “There was resistance from the extended family and complete non-acceptance in the office from executives and vendors alike,” says Sureka. Rather than getting her bogged down, she says, it made her stronger and more determined to prove herself. What worked was her consistency and just showing up every day doing what she had to do.

Her experience was not unusual. For an entire generation of women entering family-owned businesses, the first hurdle was often having to justify why they needed to work at all. At best, it was seen as a hobby.

However, a lot has changed in the intervening decades. Building on the path forged by the earlier generations, more women from second and third generations of business families are joining enterprises owned by their parents, contributing significantly to business growth. But while getting a foot in the door may have become easier, earning acceptance and establishing authority in traditionally male-dominated organisations remain challenges.

Gauri Kirloskar, a fifth-generation member of the 138-year-old Kirloskar Group, found that family support did not necessarily translate into acceptance at work. Now Managing Director of Kirloskar Oil Engines, she recalls an investor meeting where a person directed every question at her but avoided making eye contact, choosing instead to look at the CFO seated beside her. “Even with the advantages I had, some biases were just unconscious and did play out,” she says.

According to Kirloskar, what made acceptance difficult was also that she took charge of a core engineering business before turning 40 without an engineering degree or the expected tenure. She has since led strategic expansion into newer areas like defence, commissioning a project for the Indian Navy, as well as other engine categories like fuel cells and electrolysers, alongside growing revenues and profitability.

Kirloskar has now turned her focus towards reviving the four listed group companies and put in place an ambitious Rs 5,000-crore turnaround plan aimed at doubling Kirloskar Group revenues to $5 billion by 2030. To be sure, there are two different Kirloskar Groups—one owned and run by brothers Atul and Rahul Kirloskar, and the other by Sanjay Kirloskar. Gauri Kirloskar is part of Atul & Rahul’s branch, while Rama Kirloskar (more on her later) belongs to the other branch led by Sanjay.

According to Kavil Ramachandran, former Professor of Family Business and Entrepreneurship at the Indian School of Business, changes in the external environment have helped bring about this shift. While the overall levels of education have sharply improved, shift from joint families to nuclear families meant there were fewer hands available to join the business as it grew; and in some cases, this did make it easier for women to enter the business.

Family-owned enterprises have always been at the heart of Indian industry. A 2024 McKinsey study said that in India, family-owned businesses contribute more than 75% of national GDP, one of the highest percentages in the world, with this contribution likely to rise to over 80% by 2047. This spans the entire spectrum from large to small and medium enterprises. Legal amendments like the Hindu Succession Act 2005 have also resulted in an increase in the number of women getting actively involved in businesses.

Most times, the patriarch and family are supportive of the daughter’s decision to join the business. The challenge is managing the old guard —senior managers who have spent decades at the organisation and find it difficult to accept the newcomer as a peer.

“They see the person as the MD’s daughter and not somebody with merit or a qualified individual with capabilities. She has to establish herself in this set-up and it may be challenging if she doesn’t always get the space to do it,” says Ramachandran.

Sometimes, the way families approach succession planning also complicates the issue. Often, the patriarch wants to bring in his children—whether the son or daughter—at a higher position to give them a higher salary and perks that come with the role. This can backfire and cause resentment among senior managers, making it that much harder for the person to gain access and understand the inner workings of the organisation and establish themselves.

Changing Environment

Till the early 2000s, the family business landscape was dominated by companies in heavy manufacturing-led fields like auto components or industrial products. These continue to be male-dominated and seen as unsuitable for women.

An exception is Anjali Singh, Chairperson of automotive parts maker Gabriel India and the larger Anand Group of which it is a part. Singh joined the New Delhi-based group in 2005, and after working across various functions, joined the supervisory board in 2009, eventually taking over the top role from her father, Deep C. Anand, in 2011.

The challenges are different at each stage of the journey. “Mine was having to find acceptability of a different kind—having been a second generation, working with my father under someone’s presence, then working with my father’s CEO and then appointing my own CEO. These are different journeys. The challenge is having your own identity within the organisation whilst elders are still there,” she says. Her advice is to uphold and keep the DNA of the company you inherited and still bring in your own unique elements.

Under her leadership, the Anand Group has diversified into newer areas, with a deep focus on technology and sustainability. This includes new launches under the flagship company Gabriel India, as well as a new platform focused on green technologies and future mobility solutions.

Singh served as Chairperson of the ACMA Western Region and of CII Northern Region for 2025-26, roles that come with their own set of challenges. “Some of these associations are still very male dominated. It takes a little bit of your skills of positioning yourselves to hold your own among some stalwarts of the industry,” she says.

Sometimes it is simply about people being uncomfortable with a woman being present in a male-dominated environment. “Often at industry body dinners or events, I find myself the only woman in the room, and the men struggling to make conversation with me,” says Gauri Kirloskar. “I call these minor inconveniences, but I have not faced too many challenges myself.”

Things changed a bit post liberalisation with a new generation of entrepreneurs setting up business in areas like healthcare and consumer goods. These are also areas where women have traditionally found some representation, even if not at the top, making acceptance a bit easier. “Women have always played an important role in building and strengthening healthcare organisations and have for decades been strongly represented among clinicians, laboratory professionals and across many other functions,” says Alisha Moopen, Managing Director and Group CEO, Aster DM Healthcare.

For her, the challenge wasn’t so much around gender but being a young leader in the workplace. “One thing I learnt quite early is that you cannot spend too much energy wondering whether people see you as young, as a woman, or as the founder’s daughter. You have to focus on becoming someone whose contribution is difficult to ignore,” she says.

Starting with a single department, she worked her way through the Bengaluru-headquartered organisation, understanding it from the ground up. She rates the move from finance to broader operational and business leadership as the most significant one. Following the separation of Aster’s India and GCC business, she now heads the GCC entity, overseeing operations across the Middle Eastern region, which include 15 hospitals, 126 clinics, and 338 pharmacies. The company recently announced an investment of AED 1 billion (about Rs 2,500 crore). It is also expanding its presence to Saudi Arabia.

Building Credibility, Trust

Irrespective of the industry, most women leaders have had to fight a bit harder than their male counterparts to establish their credibility.

Part of the problem often is that men don’t know how to deal with women in positions of power or senior positions, says Vanitha Datla, Vice Chairperson & Managing Director at Elico Healthcare Services, whose PhD research was on ‘Navigating Family Business: An Exploratory Study on Women’s Roles and Contributions in Indian Family Enterprises.’

“The new generation of women leaders are highly educated, often abroad, and have worked outside the family business, which helps establish their credentials to some extent,” she says. In her research, Datla found that families by and large were always supportive of the women’s decision to enter the family enterprise. The resistance came from non-family members who often struggle to take orders from a woman, she says.

When Vinita Gupta joined Lupin, women were sorely under-represented in the pharmaceutical industry. “What helped me navigate those situations was developing deep expertise and staying relentlessly focused on delivering meaningful outcomes. I learned early on that sustained performance is the most powerful equaliser,” she says. The turning point for her came when she was asked to establish the business in the US—among the world’s most competitive pharma markets—in the late 1990s. , Lupin is the third-largest pharma company in the US as per prescriptions filled with over 150 commercialised products. Along with this, Gupta, who took over as CEO in 2013, takes pride in the company’s transformation into a more innovation-driven, future-ready organisation over the past five years.

The same philosophy holds true for Rama Kirloskar, Joint Managing Director, Kirloskar Brothers. Walking into an established business built by the generations before you has its advantages, but the onus to build trust and credibility still remains. “In our family, there has never really been a distinction between men and women in the business, whether in terms of working in the company or leading it. The bigger challenge, therefore, was not being a woman in a male-dominated field; it was establishing credibility and showing that I could contribute meaningfully to the business,” she says.

Over the past few years, she’s worked at making Kirloskar Ebara Pumps debt free, in part by moving from volume-led manufacturing to creating more specialised engineering applications. (Kirloskar Ebara Pumps is a joint venture between Kirloskar Brothers and Japan’s Ebara Corporation.) Alongside, she made operational and portfolio-level changes across the group, resulting in an overall improvement in capital efficiency and margins across group businesses.

For her, leadership is not about asserting authority. “It is about earning trust, making decisions when they need to be made and taking responsibility for those decisions. When people know that you value their experience and are genuinely willing to listen, I believe it becomes much easier to work together,” she says.

Jyothy M.R. recalls how she spent hours at business meetings after joining Jyothy Labs in 2005 with no specific designation or responsibility. Now Managing Director of a company named after her, she was clear about wanting to join the business from the time she was a teenager. “It was the most logical thing for me, but my father never forced me; he left it to me to decide,” she says.

Sometimes, a small idea can prove career defining and help cement one’s place in the organisation. For Jyothy, the breakthrough came in 2009 when the company wanted to boost its market share in Southern India and a senior executive asked her to step up. “I washed dishes at home and knew it was a messy job,” she says. That’s how she hit upon the idea to create a kit with a scrubber, a product that went on to revolutionise the segment. “Exo made me, how Ujala made my dad,” she says candidly. This gave her, and perhaps her father, the confidence to let her get involved with the other brands in the portfolio as well, leading up to her being appointed Managing Director in 2020.

For Lupin’s Gupta, being given charge of the US market ended up becoming a career defining experience. “At the time, the opportunity was far from obvious. We were entering a landscape dominated by large, established players, and convincing internal stakeholders to back a bold, resource-intensive US expansion required presenting a clear, long-term strategic vision,” she says. “One of the most important lessons I have learned is that trust cannot be demanded; it is earned over time through judgement, consistency, and how you handle difficult moments.”

Showing up consistently, speaking to people and letting them know you’re there to learn and help the business are critical to being accepted. For Megha Garg, Whole-time Director of high-precision automotive and industrial component maker Happy Forgings, things were a bit different. She entered the business as the daughter-in-law of the founder. After studying in the UK, she worked in consulting for a few years before moving back to India. When she joined her husband Ashish at the company set up by her father-in-law Paritosh Kumar Garg, it was a far cry from the world of consulting and accounting that she was used to.

“I spent time talking to all the business heads across the organisation to understand what they did and that helped me gain a deep understanding of the business, down to how an 8,000-tonne forging press works,” she says. In addition to spearheading digital marketing and stakeholder communications, she has been driving the company’s sustainability framework, training herself and her team on how to look at ESG and how to report it, setting a goal to reduce Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 while expanding the use of renewable energy.

Leading from the front

Very often, acceptance comes from seeing how the leader handles difficult situations. In 2023, the genset industry was going through a change in emission norms, which meant that the entire product range at Kirloskar Oil Engines had to be rejigged. Not satisfied with the pace of development, Gauri Kirloskar held a meeting of all the employees where she made two things clear. “The first was that we will remain committed to our core competence, which is energy and power, and the second was a message of ‘all hands on deck’ for the emission changes. I could see the change in energy in that room when I made the commitment that KOEL will remain an engineering company,” she says. “And after that magic happened, it rejuvenated the whole company and we were actually the first in the industry to get all our products certified and approved with the new emission standards.”

When leaders show that they can carry teams, employees and the organisation along with them, not only does it silence the naysayers, it also brings about a more positive environment at work, which translates into performance.

When Nyrika Holkar joined Godrej Enterprises in 2017, she came with experience as a corporate lawyer in London and Mumbai. This proved to be particularly useful while negotiating the 2024 family agreement that separated the Godrej family’s sprawling business interests into two groups —one led by Adi Godrej and the other by Jamshyd Godrej. Holkar, Executive Director, Godrej Enterprises Group, led the strategy and negotiation for the Godrej Enterprises Group led by Jamshyd.

She’s also used her background to set up end-to-end processes for the management of commercial contracts, risk and intellectual property. Currently, Holkar is focused on reviving the furniture brand Godrej Interio. She is also a brand custodian for the group. Finding a balance between preserving the legacy of the brand while ensuring it remains relevant in an increasingly changing business landscape is tricky, but essential. That’s a challenge for family enterprises across the board, more so for brands like Godrej, which are over 100 years old. “The natural inclination would be to preserve everything or to change everything. Neither of the two is very helpful,” says Holkar. “One must identify the elements that are enduring and specific aspects that need to be changed,” she says.

Growing into Leadership

At their core, all businesses are political beings. “You have to realise that the business environment will always be political. If you push back against the old guard, they will sit up and respect you. But you have to prove yourself,” says Ramachandran of ISB.

Irrespective of whether it was a fight to establish their right to be a part of the business, or almost a foregone conclusion, one thing that binds all the women across generations is the idea of stewardship and being custodians of the business. Equally important is the focused effort to increase the representation of women in the workplace. “We are carrying the legacy forward and protecting it for those who follow us,” says Emami’s Sureka. She has actively worked towards increasing the number of women in senior leadership roles in the company; it was only natural that her daughter Avishi joined the business a few years ago.

It can be a bit more challenging in engineering-led businesses, but there is a visible shift. “We are seeing women contribute across the industrial spectrum, from the shop floor and precision engineering to the design of complex heavy-engineering systems. But increasing representation is only the starting point,” says Holkar. “The real measure of progress is whether we create the opportunities, support career pathways for women to advance into leadership, and navigate critical transitions in their professional lives. Our ambition is not simply to bring more women into manufacturing, but to enable more women to shape its future.”

Ultimately, what matters is upholding the family legacy while ensuring that the business continues to grow and remain relevant. And that is the compass that continues to guide these leaders. 

(With inputs from Krishna Gopalan and Karan Dhar)