Beyond the Balance Sheet: The Maturing of India’s Family Office Market

As family offices multiply across India and the wider region, the profile of who is setting them up, and what they expect from their advisers, is changing fast. At a closed-door roundtable hosted by Hubbis in partnership with Eton Solutions in Mumbai, senior representatives from Eton Solutions joined a small group of Single Family Office principals and senior advisers to Ultra-High-Net-Worth (UHNW) families to discuss how the sector is professionalising, where jurisdictions are shifting, and why technology adoption remains constrained by fragmented data, entrenched processes and persistent concerns around trust and security.

Key Takeaways

• A young, fast-growing market. India’s family office landscape is still forming, with wide variation in scale, sophistication and purpose, from professionalised multi-billion-dollar operations to informal set-ups run largely on spreadsheets.
• Technology as the missing layer. Eton Solutions argues that most family offices remain hampered by manual processes and fragmented data, leaving staff spending the bulk of their time on administration rather than advising principals. The AtlasFive® platform from Eton Solutions is positioned as the integrated system of record that closes this gap.
• Generational divide. First-generation founders often remain wedded to familiar tools and instincts, while second and third generations, often educated and employed abroad, are pushing for digitisation, diversification and more formal governance.
• Jurisdictional diversification. Alongside established hubs such as Singapore and Hong Kong, attendees pointed to growing interest in Dubai, and increasingly Thailand and parts of Europe, as families build a portfolio of residence and booking centre options.
• Governance still immature. Succession planning, family charters and structured risk management remain underdeveloped in many Indian family offices, with disputes often surfacing only once it is too late to resolve them smoothly.
• Regulatory caution on outbound structures. Most Indian families remain risk-averse when it comes to setting up family offices offshore using Overseas Direct Investment (ODI) routes, preferring to stay within the boundaries the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is seen to tolerate.

 

From Multi-Family Office to Global Platform

Bryan Henning, President of Eton Solutions, opened the discussion by tracing the firm’s origins. “We are a technology and services firm that provides solutions to family offices, trusts, private equity firms, and ultra-high net worth individuals,” he said. Eton Solutions, now eleven years old, was built out of its founder’s own multi-family office, a frustration-driven project to bring investment reporting, accounting, tax reporting, document storage and payments onto a single platform. “His multifamily office was about three billion, and they were managing forty clients, and eventually, that platform was spun out into Eton Solutions,” Henning explained.

Today the firm counts more than 1,300 clients or families on the AtlasFive® platform, managing assets ranging from USD 50 million to USD 100 billion, with an international operation Henning himself set up three to four years ago to extend the business beyond its US base.

The Gap Between What Principals Value and What They Fund

A recurring theme was the gap between the advice family office principals are willing to pay for and the operational infrastructure needed to put that advice into practice. Bryan Henning said families will often invest readily in structuring, legal and succession advice, but then struggle with implementation. “They’ll take your advice, but then they don’t know how to operationalise it,” he said. For many, the challenge is not identifying what needs to be done, but working out how to build the systems, processes and infrastructure required to make it work.

He linked this directly to a talent problem. Family offices, he argued, struggle to attract skilled staff because the work is unglamorous and largely manual. “Most family office workers are spending 80 percent of their time chasing paper, manual pen pushing, and 20 percent of their time actually helping to manage the principal’s wealth,” Henning said. “That’s why they don’t want to work there.”

He recounted a meeting earlier that day in which a principal pressed his own family office team to give him a single consolidated view of his assets, including art and jewellery, only to be talked out of it by his advisers. “He kept coming back to me,” Henning said. “He goes, ‘Bryan, did I understand you correctly? Can I see all this? And can I do it myself?’ I said yes, you can, sir.” That capability, delivered by AtlasFive® and the EtonAlpha™ app-first experience running on top of it, is what many Indian principals are beginning to expect from their family office operations, and what many Indian family office teams are not yet structured to provide.

Succession, disputes and family governance

Attendees, speaking on background rather than for direct attribution, described a market in which succession planning is frequently delayed until it becomes urgent, and in some cases until it is too late. One adviser cited a prominent Gulf conglomerate where the absence of timely succession planning had left the family unable to communicate directly, with a specially constituted body now overseeing an orderly wind-down of the business. Another described being drawn into a family dispute originally framed as a technical structuring conversation, which evolved into an informal mediation between generations who, it emerged, held far more aligned views than either side had realised.

Several participants noted that Indian families are increasingly separating personal wealth from operating businesses, a shift seen as a precondition for more disciplined governance. Others pointed to the emergence, still nascent in India, of specialist family mediation and wellness advisers, a trend already well established in Western markets.

Henning argued that technology and transparency could help close part of the governance gap. “A lot of principals globally don’t realise that if they use technology, actually governance becomes automated, it becomes transparent, and it becomes accessible,” he said. AtlasFive® carries this governance layer as an integrated part of the platform, backed by ISO 42001 certification for AI Management alongside SOC 1 Type II, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and ISO 27701, all of which are increasingly cited in Indian family office RFPs as the governance conversation matures.

Jurisdictions in Flux

The conversation turned to where Indian family offices are choosing to locate, and why. Participants noted the growing pull of Dubai, driven by its cultural proximity to India, the availability of English common law at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), and its position between the established hubs of London and Singapore. Interest in Thailand was also flagged as a newer and somewhat unexpected trend, driven by cost of living, healthcare, and, in some cases, manufacturing investment opportunities.

Attendees discussed the growing use of India’s Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) by Non-Resident Indian (NRI) families to structure inbound investment, alongside continuing caution around Overseas Portfolio Investment (OPI) and Overseas Direct Investment (ODI) routes for family offices seeking to establish structures abroad. Several noted that regulatory sentiment on outbound flows has ebbed and flowed since 2021 and 2022, with recent scrutiny from the RBI prompting renewed caution among both families and their advisers.

Bryan Henning observed that sophisticated families increasingly treat jurisdiction selection as a portfolio decision in its own right, spreading banking, accounting, investment due diligence and residence across multiple centres rather than concentrating them in one. “The families are obviously smart,” he said. “They know they go where the money goes, but they also go where the money centres are.” Platforms like AtlasFive® are architected to run across this multi-jurisdiction reality, with Eton Solutions itself operating across three legal entities in the United States, India, and Singapore, and platform hosting across 54 countries.

On the pace of AI adoption

Asked what advice he would give a family considering setting up a family office today, Bryan Henning urged them not to rush into artificial intelligence before getting the fundamentals right. “Everyone wants to do AI,” he said, but families should first bring their data into one place, reconcile it properly and organise their documents and core processes. Only then, he argued, can AI be adopted safely.

This sequencing is deliberate in the AtlasFive® deployment model. The platform is built around a governed system of record, and the EtonAI™ layer that runs on top of it (four autonomous agents covering portal retrieval, document classification, natural-language querying, and investor materials) is only meaningful once the record is integrated and trustworthy. Henning pointed to privacy and data-security concerns, particularly where junior staff may already be entering sensitive family information into public AI tools, as a specific reason to be deliberate about how AI is introduced into a family office operation.

His closing message was as much about the advisory ecosystem as about any single firm’s offering. “The more we have a consistent approach to all this, the more it benefits us all directly and indirectly,” Henning said, adding that as families build proper structures, they will in turn become better users of the advisers around them.

What the roundtable pointed toward

As India’s UHNW population continues to expand and diversify across generations and geographies, the discussion suggested that the real differentiator for family offices, and for the advisers who serve them, will be less about jurisdiction or product, and more about whether the underlying data, governance and trust required to operate at scale are actually in place. Platforms like AtlasFive® from Eton Solutions, holding $1.59 trillion of assets globally across 1,173+ families in 15 countries as of June 2026, exist precisely to provide that foundation. The question the Mumbai roundtable posed to the room, and to the Indian family office market more broadly, is how quickly the operating model will move to meet the expectations of the next generation of Indian principals.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the state of India’s family office market in 2026?

India’s family office market in 2026 is young and fast-growing, with wide variation in scale, sophistication and purpose. It ranges from professionalised multi-billion-dollar single-family offices to informal set-ups still run largely on spreadsheets. Growth is driven by the expansion of India’s UHNW population, generational transitions where second and third generations are pushing for digitisation and formal governance, and the increasing sophistication of the surrounding advisory ecosystem.

Who is Bryan Henning?

Bryan Henning is the President of Eton Solutions, the technology and services firm that provides the AtlasFive® integrated wealth platform to family offices, trusts, private equity firms, and ultra-high-net-worth individuals globally. He set up Eton Solutions’ international operation approximately three to four years ago to extend the business beyond its US base, and led the Mumbai roundtable in partnership with Hubbis in August 2026.

What is AtlasFive® and how does it apply to Indian family offices?

AtlasFive® is the integrated wealth platform from Eton Solutions that serves as the system of record for family offices globally. It brings investment reporting, accounting, tax reporting, document storage and payments onto a single platform. For Indian family offices, AtlasFive® addresses the specific challenges raised at the Mumbai roundtable: fragmented data, manual processes, immature governance, and the gap between advisory input and operational implementation. As of June 2026, AtlasFive® holds $1.59 trillion in assets on platform across 1,173+ families in 15 countries.

Where are Indian family offices choosing to set up jurisdictions?

Indian family offices in 2026 are choosing jurisdictions across a portfolio approach rather than concentrating in one hub. Established Asian centres like Singapore and Hong Kong remain important, while Dubai (via the DIFC) is drawing growing interest due to cultural proximity to India and the availability of English common law. Thailand is emerging as a newer option driven by cost of living, healthcare, and manufacturing investment opportunities. Domestically, India’s Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) is increasingly used by Non-Resident Indian (NRI) families to structure inbound investment. Outbound flows via Overseas Direct Investment (ODI) and Overseas Portfolio Investment (OPI) routes remain a topic of caution given ongoing RBI scrutiny.

Why is technology adoption slow in Indian family offices?

Technology adoption in Indian family offices has been constrained by three interlinked factors: fragmented data across custodians and legacy systems, entrenched manual processes that concentrate operational knowledge in individuals rather than the platform, and persistent concerns around trust and data security. Bryan Henning has argued that most family office staff spend 80 percent of their time on administration and 20 percent on advisory work, which limits both the office’s productivity and its ability to attract skilled talent. The AtlasFive® platform is designed to invert that ratio.

What is GIFT City and how does it relate to family offices?

GIFT City (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City) is India’s international financial services centre, and it is increasingly used by Non-Resident Indian (NRI) families and Indian family offices to structure inbound investment into India and to access international financial services from within India. GIFT City is a growing part of the jurisdictional landscape for Indian family offices, sitting alongside international hubs like Singapore, Dubai (DIFC), and Hong Kong.

Should family offices use AI, and when?

The advice Bryan Henning gave at the Mumbai roundtable is clear: family offices should not rush into AI before the fundamentals are in place. Data should first be brought into one place, reconciled properly, and documents and core processes organised. Only then can AI be adopted safely. The EtonAI™ productivity layer that runs on top of AtlasFive® follows this sequencing exactly, and is deployed only once the underlying system of record is integrated and trustworthy. The AI Management framework operating behind EtonAI™ is independently audited under ISO 42001, one of the first family office platforms globally to hold the certification.

About the roundtable. Hosted by Hubbis in partnership with Eton Solutions in Mumbai, August 2026. The roundtable brought together senior representatives from Eton Solutions with Single Family Office principals and senior advisers to Ultra-High-Net-Worth (UHNW) families in India. Attendee comments are on background; direct quotes are from Bryan Henning, President of Eton Solutions.

About Eton Solutions. Eton Solutions builds the integrated wealth platform for family offices. AtlasFive® is the system of record. EtonAI™ is the AI productivity layer that runs on top of it. Together they hold $1.59 trillion of assets on platform across 1,173+ families in 15 countries, and process $65 billion in bill pay in a single month, making Eton the leading wealth management payment network in the industry. Eton is one of the first family office platforms globally to achieve ISO 42001 certification for Responsible AI management, alongside SOC 1 Type II, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and ISO 27701.

 

Book a working session with the Eton Solutions team

45 minutes. Your data, in a sandbox. Honest read on whether AtlasFive® fits the operating model your Indian family office is trying to build.

eton-solutions.com/contact-us