Business Continuity Planning

Most Indian founders build companies that die with them. Ninety percent of Indian businesses are family-run, and fewer than one in three survive to the second generation. The failure is almost never operational — it is planning.

Continuity planning has four layers. Ownership: a clear shareholding structure with a documented succession — buy-sell agreements between co-founders, cross-purchase or entity-purchase funded by keyman insurance, a family trust holding promoter shares to prevent forced fragmentation.

Leadership: a named successor CEO, an independent board that can operate for six months without the founder, documented authority matrices so vendors, banks and regulators know who signs.

Cash: a keyman insurance policy on every irreplaceable individual, sized to fund at least 18 months of operating cost — that is the runway required to hire, transition and stabilise.

Knowledge: relationships written down. Every key customer, every lender covenant, every regulatory contact, every source-code repository, every domain, every password vault — inventoried and accessible to the successor within 24 hours of an event.

Do this once, review it annually. It is the difference between a company that outlives its founder and an obituary that mentions one.