Overview
A family office is the back office for a family’s money: one place that holds the records, tracks every entity and investment, files every return, and reports to the family in one consolidated view. Most Indian business families already have one in practice, spread across the company’s accounts team, an outside CA and a spreadsheet someone in the family keeps. Setting one up properly means deciding what it legally is, who controls it, what it reports, and how it carries on when the generation running it changes.
The vehicle comes first. A family office can sit inside an existing group company, run as its own private limited company or LLP that serves the family’s entities, hold assets through a private trust under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882, or, for families with a global portfolio, use a Family Investment Fund in GIFT IFSC regulated by the IFSCA. Each choice changes how income is taxed, who signs, what has to be filed and how easily a share in it passes to the next generation, so we lay the options side by side with the trade-offs written down before anything is formed.
We set up and run the office: the entities, the governance charter, the accounting and consolidated reporting, the compliance calendar across every family entity, and the handover pack for the family members and staff who will run it. We do not advise on what to invest in. CapEasy is not a SEBI-registered investment adviser; investment decisions stay with the family and any registered adviser or portfolio manager it appoints, and our reporting is built to track whatever they decide.
Who it’s for
- Founders after a liquidity event (an exit, a secondary sale or a large dividend) whose personal wealth now needs its own structure, separate from the operating company
- Business families running two or more companies, properties and investment accounts with no single consolidated view of what the family owns
- Families whose finances are spread across a group accounts team, an outside CA and personal spreadsheets, with nobody accountable for the whole picture
- Families with members abroad, where residency, foreign holdings and repatriation have to be planned alongside the Indian structure
Eligibility & requirements
- An inventory of what the family holds: companies and shareholdings, properties, bank and demat accounts, investments, loans given and taken
- Who in the family decides, who is consulted, and who should eventually take over running the office
- Each member’s residential status, since residency changes how income and foreign assets are taxed and reported
- The existing advisers (CA, lawyers, bankers, any investment adviser) and what each currently handles
How CapEasy handles it
- Discovery: a confidential working session with the family, then a written map of every entity, asset and obligation as it stands today
- Structure options: the possible vehicles (in-house, company, LLP, private trust, GIFT IFSC fund) compared on tax, control, compliance load and succession, with a recommendation and its reasons
- Governance: a family office charter covering who decides what, approval limits, conflicts of interest and how disputes are settled, and, where the family wants one, a family constitution
- Formation: the chosen entities incorporated or the trust settled, bank and demat accounts opened, and assets moved in the order that keeps tax and stamp duty in check
- Operations: accounting, consolidated quarterly reporting across every entity and account, and one compliance calendar for every return and filing the family owes
- Handover: a written operating manual for the staff and family members who run the office, and a yearly review of the structure as the family changes
Documents you’ll typically need
- PAN and Aadhaar of each family member involved, and passports for members living abroad
- Incorporation documents, shareholding records and the last audited financials of each family company
- Title documents for properties, and statements for bank, demat and investment accounts
- Any existing wills, trust deeds, family arrangements or shareholder agreements
