Inheritance battle at Sona Comstar

A sudden death triggers a public dispute over who controls a major Indian auto components group.

Inheritance battle tests India's family business rules

Sunjay Kapur died on 12 June in Surrey, UK, after a heart attack while playing polo. He was a key heir to Sona Comstar, a $3.6bn business with a global footprint including plants in India, China, Mexico and the United States. Public shareholders own about 71.98% of Sona Comstar, with the remaining 28.02% held by promoters via Aureus Investments, and Sunjay was the sole beneficiary of the RK Family Trust, which controls the promoter stake. Weeks after his death, his mother, Rani Kapur, who formerly chaired the group, sent a letter to the board raising questions about his death and the appointments made after. She alleged the death was in “highly suspicious and unexplained circumstances,” and said she was coerced into signing key documents while in distress. The coroner’s office in Surrey said the postmortem found natural causes and that the investigation had been closed. The board proceeded with an AGM, appointing Sunjay’s wife Priya Sachdev as a non-executive director the day after Rani Kapur’s appeal, while the company denied her claims and said she had no role in Sona Comstar since 2019.

India has a long tradition of family controlled firms, and this case underscore how those loyalties collide with formal governance. Ownership is tangled through family trusts and promoter entities, which can obscure voting power and complicate succession. Experts note that 90% of listed Indian firms are family controlled, yet only about 63% have formal succession plans, leaving room for ambiguity and conflict when a patriarch dies. The case also highlights how boards respond under pressure when a family dispute erupts into public view, risking not just governance norms but investor confidence.

Highlights

The outcome may set a precedent for how Indian family firms balance tradition with formal governance.