My nephew recently graduated from a university in Hyderabad.
He comes from an upper-middle-class business family in a small town. Their family business generates crore in revenue every year, and over decades they have built assets and wealth that most people would consider successful.
But there is a twist.
His parents never wanted their children to continue the family business. Like many Indian parents, they believed education was the path to a better life. The dream was simple. Get a degree, move to a big city, get a corporate job, and settle down.
Now, after graduation, he is struggling to find an internship that pays ₹10,000 a month or a job that pays ₹20,000.
There are four siblings in the family. Assuming the family wealth gets divided equally one day, each child may inherit around ₹1 crore. In cities like Hyderabad, Pune, Bengaluru, or Mumbai, that amount is barely enough to buy a decent flat.
What strikes me is this.
The very business that created the family's wealth may disappear within one generation. Not because it failed, but because the next generation was encouraged to move away from it.
And this is not just one story.
I have seen similar situations among friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. In many parts of India, even today, joining the family business after completing your education is often seen as a sign that you could not get a good placement or a respectable corporate job.
Somehow, we celebrate a fresher salary of ₹25,000 per month but look down on a young graduate who chooses to scale a business that already employs people and generates meaningful income.
Of course, not every family business should be continued, and not every child should be forced into one.
But maybe we have gone too far in the other direction.
Perhaps success is not always about leaving your hometown, moving to a metro, and working in an office tower.
Sometimes success is taking what your parents built through decades of effort and making it bigger.
India talks a lot about entrepreneurship. Yet in many families, the easiest entrepreneur to become is the one we discourage the most. The next generation already sitting inside a functioning business.
Just something I have been thinking about lately.
Are we unintentionally destroying generational wealth in the pursuit of white-collar success?