Super rich Indian families joined the Ambanis to set up family offices in Singapore

Mr. Patni’s father and his brothers founded Patni Computers in the 1970s and were one of the pioneers of information technology in India.

Over the decades, the company has grown to nearly $1.5 billion. They sought a public listing in 2004, and in 2011 IT firm iGate bought Patni Computers for $1.5 billion.

After selling the business and dividing the fortune, Mr. Patni established a unique family office – RAAY Global Investments – to ensure that his legacy became a vehicle for growth and entrepreneurship.

“My family office has done all the trust management and estate planning for my children, so if anything happens to me, it will continue to work for the family without any confusion,” he said.

The wealthy Indian diaspora, not yet in the billionaire category—typically families with more than $5 million in investable assets—are making their first foray into more formal office structures through a multi-family office (MFO), which has emerged as a fast-growing segment of the industry.

An MFO allows various wealthy families to pool their resources to access high-caliber personalized financial advice while remaining cost-effective.

Mr Vimal Shah, chairman of FMCG firm Bidco Africa in East Africa, relies on a network of MFOs spread across Singapore, Mauritius, Dubai and Switzerland, rather than setting up a single-family office.

“They give us all the details and advice on where to invest, which the family then digests before deciding what we want to do,” he said.

This international approach is increasingly being applied by super-rich Indians in the diaspora who are looking for opportunities beyond their homeland.

When it comes to parting with their money, younger super-rich Indians and those living abroad are increasingly investing in technology-based startups to build wealth.

Over the past two decades, family offices in India have backed more than 200 startups and remain active participants in startup funding rounds, the DBS report said.

Until recently, wealthy Indian families were most likely to invest their wealth in physical assets such as real estate and gold. About a third of their assets include residential real estate, both domestically and abroad.

However, high interest rates and weak post-Covid housing markets have left some families rethinking the value of their property investments.

“Real estate investment in India is not as easy as it might be in Singapore or elsewhere and it is also a very volatile sector,” Mr Patni said.

“I thought for a long time that the UK property environment was very good, then Brexit, Covid and the war in Ukraine hit and suddenly the returns weren’t great.”