Every year UBS surveys the family offices it works with, from Zurich to Singapore to Mumbai, and asks a simple question: is a change coming to how the family’s money is allocated. This year, 60 percent said yes. That is the highest number UBS has recorded since it began asking. Something in how the world’s serious, patient capital thinks about risk has shifted, and India sits at the centre of where that capital is now looking.
Family offices and multi-generational business families are increasingly part of the conversation around India allocation at Right Horizons. Until recently, the conversation about India was framed as a satellite bet. A small allocation, sized like a call option on the growth story, sitting next to a much larger developed market core. That framing is changing, and it is changing for reasons that go well beyond sentiment.
Two separate trends are running in parallel right now, and together they tell a clear story. The first is a global one. Family offices everywhere are pulling back from concentrated, US dollar heavy portfolios and adding measured exposure to emerging market equities. The second is local. India’s own family office industry has grown so quickly that it barely resembles what it looked like six years ago. This article looks at both trends and at what they mean for how a family thinks about sizing its India allocation.
The Global Signal
A Record Share of Family
Offices Are Changing Course
The UBS Global Family Office Report 2026 surveyed 307 family offices across more than 30 markets, with an average net worth of 2.7 billion US dollars per family. The headline finding is a record one. Sixty percent of respondents plan to change their strategic asset allocation in the next twelve months, up sharply from 35 percent in last year’s report. UBS calls this a measured, deliberate recalibration, not a wholesale reallocation. But the direction of that recalibration is unambiguous.
Source: UBS Global Family Office Report 2026 (307 family offices surveyed, average net worth USD 2.7 billion). EM equities and infrastructure shown directionally; UBS reports a tilt toward these assets without a single blended percentage. Published May 2026.
Look at what is actually moving. Real estate, long the default safe asset for old money, is planned to fall from 11 percent of allocations to 8 percent among those making changes. Gold, treated for years as a rounding error in most portfolios, is expected to rise from 2 percent to 3 percent, as a hedge against currency and geopolitical risk. And a genuine, if measured, tilt is underway toward emerging market equities and infrastructure. Perhaps the most telling number in the whole report is this one: 65 percent of family offices expect confidence in the US dollar’s reserve currency status to weaken over time. When the world’s largest pools of private capital start hedging against their own home currency, diversification stops being a slide in a pitch deck and becomes a portfolio decision.
The India Story
India’s Family Office Industry
Has Grown Seven Fold Since 2018
While UBS was recording a global shift, a domestic story was unfolding inside India itself. The country had about 45 family offices in 2018. By 2024, industry estimates put that number at close to 300, according to PwC research cited by IBEF. The Economic Times and research firm 1Lattice, in their Indian Family Offices Report 2026, add more texture. The number of Indian families with wealth above 30 million US dollars is projected to rise from about 16,000 in 2025 to roughly 26,000 by 2030. Intergenerational wealth transfers over the coming decade could reach 1.3 to 1.5 trillion US dollars.
Sources: PwC research cited by IBEF (family office count, 2018 and 2024); Sundaram Alternates ‘From Legacy to Leadership’ report (AUM of USD 30 billion in 2024, projected to USD 45 billion within three years, roughly 2027). The 2030 figure is a directional industry expectation cited across multiple advisory reports, not a single forecast, and should be read as illustrative.
Sundaram Alternates projects that assets under management across Indian family offices will grow from about 30 billion US dollars in 2024 to roughly 45 billion US dollars within three years, a jump of about 50 percent. Knight Frank’s Wealth Report projects the number of ultra high net worth Indians will rise 50.1 percent, from 13,263 in 2023 to nearly 19,908 by 2028. None of this growth is happening because families in India suddenly discovered investing. It is happening because a generation of first liquidity events, promoter monetisation, and public listings is concentrating wealth faster than informal advisory structures can absorb it, and families are responding by professionalising how that wealth is managed.
Where the Two Stories Meet
Structured Vehicles Are Becoming
the Preferred Route Into India
A global family office reassessing its emerging market exposure and a domestic Indian family setting up its first professional office are, on the surface, different problems. But both are increasingly arriving at the same practical answer: a regulated, structured, closed ended vehicle rather than a scattered set of direct positions.
India’s Category III Alternative Investment Fund industry had grown to about 15.74 lakh crore rupees by December 2025, compounding at close to 30 percent a year over five years, with industry estimates projecting a rise to 53 to 56 lakh crore rupees by 2030. AIFs have moved from a niche allocation to a mainstream one inside Indian HNI portfolios, rising from about 3.5 percent of household financial savings in FY2019 to roughly 6.4 percent in FY2026. The accredited investor category, reserved for the most sophisticated allocators, grew from 649 individuals in April 2025 to 2,773 by April 2026, a rise of more than 300 percent in a single year.
Source: SEBI data, CRISIL and industry estimates, as compiled in Right Horizons’ internal AIF market research, June 2026.
This is not a coincidence. A closed ended, professionally managed fund structure solves a genuine problem for a family office. It removes the day to day burden of tracking individual positions, it enforces a discipline around entry and exit that a family’s own investment committee may find difficult to hold to on its own, and it gives a family a named, accountable manager to evaluate over time, the same way they would evaluate a private equity general partner.
Why This Shift Is Happening Now
Four structural and behavioural forces behind the reallocation toward India
A Word of Caution
More Money Moving Does Not
Mean Every Vehicle Deserves It
None of this data is an argument for allocating to India, or to any specific fund, without the same diligence a family office would apply to any allocation decision. A rising tide of capital into a category can just as easily raise the valuations of weaker vehicles as it does strong ones. What this data does argue for is treating India as a considered, sized allocation with a clear process behind it, rather than as an afterthought bolted onto a developed market core.
Portfolio Construction Implications
What Rising Structural Capital Flows
Mean for How India Exposure Is Built
The two trends discussed in this article, a global tilt toward emerging market equities and a rapidly maturing domestic family office and AIF ecosystem, point toward a shared consequence. As more capital, both global and domestic, treats India as a structural allocation rather than a tactical trade, a larger pool of money will be competing for exposure to the same relatively narrow set of well governed, capital efficient small and mid cap businesses capable of compounding earnings over multi-year cycles. Broad, index-level exposure to this segment captures the average business alongside the strongest ones, at a moment when the dispersion between the two is widening.
This dynamic is consistent with an investment philosophy built around four connected ideas. The first is a focus on quality businesses, screened for capital efficiency, governance, and durable competitive positioning, rather than on sector themes or index membership alone. The second is disciplined, bottom-up research designed to distinguish companies with a genuine, sustainable earnings growth trajectory from those simply benefiting from a rising tide. The third is a long-term investment horizon, matched to the multi-year period over which small and mid cap earnings and valuations typically play out, and well suited to the kind of patient, multi-generational capital family offices manage. The fourth is a concentrated portfolio construction approach, built on high-conviction positions in a smaller number of researched businesses rather than broad diversification across the segment.
Taken together, these four ideas describe an approach designed less to capture a rising structural trend in aggregate, and more to identify which specific businesses within that trend are best positioned to compound earnings through it. As family offices increasingly look at India as a core allocation, this distinction between owning the trend and owning the businesses driving it is likely to matter more, not less.
The data points to a consistent pattern: allocators who size India as a considered, structured position, rather than an afterthought, tend to be the ones who evaluate the vehicle, the process, and the horizon on their own merits before committing capital.
— RH AIF Research
Key Investor Takeaways
- The global reallocation is real and recorded: 60% of family offices worldwide plan an asset allocation change in 2026, the highest share UBS has ever measured, up from 35% last year.
- The direction is toward diversification, not concentration: real estate allocations are planned to fall from 11% to 8%, gold is expected to rise from 2% to 3%, and emerging market equities and infrastructure are gaining share.
- India’s own family office base has grown nearly seven fold since 2018: from 45 offices to roughly 300, with assets under management projected to rise from USD 30 billion to USD 45 billion within three years.
- Structured vehicles are the preferred entry route: India’s AIF industry has grown to ₹15.74 lakh crore and now represents 6.4% of household financial savings, up from 3.5% in FY2019.
- Patient capital and a patient asset class are a natural fit: family offices with multi-generational horizons are structurally suited to closed ended vehicles and to segments like small and mid caps, where the reward for holding through volatility has historically been meaningful.
- Rising structural capital flows make selectivity more important, not less: as more global and domestic capital competes for exposure to India’s growth story, the gap between index-level exposure and a concentrated, research-led approach to identifying the specific businesses driving that growth is likely to widen.
Frequently Asked Questions
Data sources: UBS Global Family Office Report 2026 (307 family offices surveyed, published May 2026); PwC research cited by IBEF; Sundaram Alternates ‘From Legacy to Leadership’ report; Knight Frank Wealth Report; The Economic Times and 1Lattice, Indian Family Offices Report 2026; SEBI data, CRISIL and industry estimates as compiled in Right Horizons’ internal AIF market research, June 2026. Past performance and industry growth trends are not indicative of future results.