New Delhi, Oct. 21 -- The handling of succession within one of India's oldest business families-TVS-is a cautionary tale for India Inc.

In December 2020, the TVS Group carried out a corporate restructuring. The 109-year-old conglomerate dismantled complex cross-holdings across four family branches, gave each branch operational independence and protected the group's underlying goodwill.

In doing so, it appeared to have cracked the code of multigenerational legacy planning. Yet, less than six years later, public disclosures about succession within chairman emeritus Venu Srinivasan's immediate family branch bear out a warning that dividing management roles among heirs is a different task from dividing the family's wealth within family ente...