LC Ideas: Views & Insights
India’s tech boom breaks the metro monopoly of wealth
India’s wealth engine is entering a new phase. As pools of capital broaden and compound, entrepreneurs scale beyond local markets, and family offices professionalise, investors are balancing confidence at home with disciplined global exposure.
The shift is structural, not cyclical — and, as Sumegh Bhatia, MD & CEO of Lighthouse Canton India, noted in a recent LC IDEAs: Views & Insights discussion, its implications are only beginning to unfold.
“India is growing because of its entrepreneurs,” Bhatia said. It is a point reflected in the data: India witnessed a significant wealth boom in 2024, adding more than 33,000 new millionaires in a single year, according to the World Wealth Report 2025 by Capgemini Research Institute. The number of High-Net-Worth Individuals (HNWIs) in India rose by 5.6%, bringing the total to 378,810, up from around 345,000 in 2023. — one of the fastest rates worldwide.
The bulk of this wealth, Bhatia emphasised, is founder-led and execution-driven, built by operators who understand capital efficiency, risk, and governance.
But what has changed fundamentally is a significant increase in the availability and sophistication of capital.
Private equity, structured credit, and global co-investments have opened avenues that were inaccessible a decade ago. Business families that once concentrated only on their core businesses are now constructing diversified investment platforms, often through formal family office structures that mirror international peers.
This transformation is not restricted to a few big cities in India.
“You now have listed companies out of Mysuru producing semiconductors,” Bhatia explained. “It doesn’t matter where you are anymore — access to information, infrastructure, and capital has equalised opportunity across the top 30 cities.”
With capital markets deepening and regulation becoming more predictable, entrepreneurs from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities are displaying a risk appetite comparable to global founders.
Domestic liquidity is driving this shift: SEBI data shows equity AUM has doubled in four years, supported by record SIP inflows and retail participation.
These dynamics, Bhatia noted, have compressed the evolution of wealth behaviour.“What earlier took decades is now happening in three to four years,” he said. “Access to information and connectivity has accelerated the cycle dramatically.”
For wealth managers and advisory firms, the consequence is clear — families are moving faster, expecting sharper specialisation, and demanding institutional-quality frameworks.
MANAGING THROUGH UNCERTAINTY AND CYCLES
As capital expands, the challenge shifts from creating wealth to preserving and deploying it with discipline. For Bhatia, this requires resisting noise, maintaining purpose, and avoiding reactive decision-making.
“There is no one-size-fits-all approach,” he said. “Every family is different, and no product is right or wrong. It’s about what suits them as a family.”
His guidance is straightforward: avoid trend-chasing.
“If trends become frothy, create distance from them,” he said. Instead, investors should anchor decisions to long-term intent and comfort with volatility.
Lighthouse Canton’s global presence plays a decisive role in calibrating exposure. “We use our global view as a guiding light,” Bhatia said.“If the Indian market begins to look frothy or diverges from fundamentals, we can rebalance, whether by dollarising assets or shifting toward fixed income, always within the applicable regulatory framework.”
The asset and wealth manager frequently steers families toward more deliberate use of public markets — not as momentum trades but as long-term allocations managed by high-quality managers. “Indian markets have been through a time correction, and many investors have used this phase to clean up portfolios,” he said.
Private credit has also become a core allocation.
“Whether it’s venture debt or performing credit, it’s finding space in every client portfolio,” Bhatia said. Demand is rising as families seek predictable yield without the complexity of large-ticket private equity strategies.
A renewed enthusiasm for pre-IPO investing has also emerged, but with discernment.
“Families want profitable companies at reasonable valuations two years before the IPO, not six months before when it’s frothy,” Bhatia said. Loss-making stories have lost their appeal; the focus is shifting to fundamentals.
For Lighthouse Canton, sourcing and structuring such opportunities is now central to its India franchise. “If you buy good companies at good valuations and hold them, there’s enough opportunity to make money,” he said.
BUILDING IP, SEGMENT DEPTH, AND THE FUTURE OF WEALTH FIRMS
As products proliferate and investor sophistication rises, Bhatia believes the next decade will belong to firms that prioritise intellectual property, segment depth, and client-centric design, not generic scale.
“We can’t do everything under the sun,” he said. “Every firm needs its own core competency. If you don’t have that, you don’t have a right to exist in this market.”
This principle has shaped Lighthouse Canton’s expansion in India.
The firm grew first through single-family offices, extended into private clients with USD 3–5 million AUM, and now reaches USD 1 million AUM clients through technology-driven platforms. But, Bhatia stressed, each segment requires its own operating model.
Source: Capgemini Research Report“You can’t have one relationship manager or one investment committee serve every market segment,” he said. “You have to build segment-specific capabilities.” Specialisation, not size, is becoming the defining competitive advantage.Capabilities, he added, are not built by adding star professionals but by creating a cohesive ecosystem of research, advisory, and operational support. Firms that try to be “everything to everyone” often dilute credibility by failing to meet the expectations of any segment.As India’s wealth expands and markets become more competitive, Bhatia believes the firms that succeed will be those with clarity of focus, discipline in execution, and uncompromising client-centricity. “It’s very simple — keep the client at the center, build around that, and let everything else follow,” he said.
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