Indian family offices are shifting capital to early-stage venture funds after years of concentrating on late-stage and pre-IPO investments, according to a report from Mint. The move comes as institutional investors pull back from the asset class.
Wealthy families are also backing India's deeptech startups directly. Freed from the short timelines of venture capital funds, family offices are deploying patient capital into AI, spacetech, semiconductor and defence startups, the report said.
Family offices poured more than $3 billion into tech, media and telecom companies globally. Materials attracted the most capital at $4.8 billion, the publication reported.
The shift to earlier-stage investing marks a departure from the strategy that dominated family office portfolios in recent years. Late-stage and pre-IPO bets offered shorter hold periods and clearer paths to liquidity than the multi-year commitments required by early-stage funds.
Separately, RMZ is selling office condos worth 6,500 crore rupees to family offices. Office leasing and investment volumes in commercial real estate have been rising in India, the report said. The growth in investment volume comes on the back of sustained interest from domestic institutions, family offices and global capital markets players.
The shift to earlier-stage capital is the shift to longer hold periods and thinner exit markets, family office advisor Jaf Glazer has cautioned.
Wealthy Indians are also hunting for exposure to US frontier-tech and AI companies following the SpaceX IPO. They are accessing these opportunities to diversify globally amid muted local market returns, according to the publication.
India's securities regulator said it is not considering regulatory frameworks for family offices. The Securities and Exchange Board of India announced on 3 October 2025 that claims of regulatory oversight on family offices are factually incorrect.
Himanshu Chadha, founder of Nimson International, started with 50,000 rupees and a failed batch of petroleum jelly. Two decades later, his company reaches every PIN code in India. He credited a peer group of entrepreneurs for the change his business took, the report said.