The Indian Family Office Barometer 2026

Every conversation about Indian family wealth relies on the same borrowed numbers: global surveys with a handful of Indian respondents, or anecdotes traded between advisers. The Barometer is designed to replace anecdote with an owned, annual dataset: a structured survey of 50-100 single-family offices and professionally advised families across India and its diaspora, fielded each spring and published each summer. What follows is the inaugural edition as a working prototype: the full instrument, and modelled findings that show how the results would read.

Who answers

The illustrative sample of 62 family offices spans three archetypes we observe in practice: legacy industrial families (multi-generational operating businesses, typically North and West India), first-generation founders (new-economy wealth, typically post-exit or partially liquid), and globally distributed NRI families managing wealth across two or more jurisdictions.

Where the money sits, and where it is moving

The modelled 2026 allocation tells a story consistent with the year's events: public equity remains the core but has ceded ground; gold and global assets absorbed the geopolitical shock of the spring; and private credit continues its structural climb into family portfolios.

The readiness gap, measured annually

The Barometer's most distinctive series: an annual, like-for-like measure of governance adoption. The modelled inaugural readings echo what public research already suggests (intent far ahead of documentation) and would give India, for the first time, a yearly benchmark against which every family can place itself.

GIFT City, geopolitics, and the year ahead

The remaining modules track structural adoption and sentiment. In the modelled data, 26 per cent of offices hold or are establishing a GIFT City vehicle with a further 40 per cent evaluating one; 71 per cent place geopolitical disruption among their top three concerns for the first time, the spring's events writing themselves directly into allocation intentions; and fee transparency emerges as the adviser-selection criterion respondents rank first, ahead of performance.

Whoever fields this survey owns the reference numbers for Indian family wealth. Every citation is a compounding asset.

The Private Research Desk

The questionnaire, in full

Twenty-eight questions, five modules, fifteen minutes by structured interview or secure form. Banded responses throughout (no family is asked for a precise number), and every response reported only in aggregate. The full instrument is set out below.

How the real edition would be run

Fieldwork each April-May by structured conversation or secure form; banded answers only; a minimum cell size of five before any cut is reported; findings published each July with the full instrument in the appendix; respondent families receive the results privately, two weeks before publication, with a personal benchmark against the aggregate. Participation is unpaid and anonymous; the reward is the benchmark itself.