The top five big family businesses held over 60% of income share in corporate India in the past two decades even as liberalisation made markets more competitive, according to a study appearing in World Bank Economic Review.The study titled “Business Groups, Concentration and Market Power in India” published in the World Bank Economic Review authored by Simon Commander, visiting professor at IE Business School, Madrid, Spain among other researchers from different universities, found that Reliance, Adani, Birla, Om Prakash Jindal and Tata Groups put together controlled over 60% of business revenue between 2001 and 2020. Barring Birla Group, whose share in total gross revenue reduced steadily during the study period, the shares of other family businesses increased. Reliance and Adai Groups have consistently constituted at least 20% share in total income. The shares of Om Prakash Jindal and Tata Groups increased steadily but stayed at less than 10% of income shares.The study acknowledges that the concentration in the market has reduced and as a result competitiveness has increased after liberalisation. This however has not prevented the large family business groups from dominating the market. The top 25 family business groups constitute over 15% of the Gross Domestic Product–the value of goods and services sold–in 2020, the study observed. “The paper finds that market concentration has indeed been declining during that period, mainly due to policy-induced shrinkage of the public sector. Concentration has also been falling for the private sector and for the FBGsThus, at the NIC-3 level, the proportion of industries with low concentration has risen considerably over the period,” the authors observed. The largest five firms controlled more than half of the revenues in around 74 percent of NIC-3 industries, the study found. NIC 3 refers to a Statistics Ministry classification of industries by specific subsectors.At the same time, family business groups have also diversified across different sectors, the study found.The authors concluded that Indian government’s approach of showing preference for some business groups as “national champions” in the period between 2000 and 2013 may have led to the higher concentration. “To date, public policy appears to have achieved, at best, limited success in addressing the consequences of this increased concentration for competition, whether in terms of market power in specific sectors or with respect to the level of overall concentration in the economy,” the authors wrote. Competition policy, taxation or prohibitions will not be as effective in addressing entrenched family business group power in Indian market, the authors said while suggesting that setting specific limits to the maximum market share that a business group can hold and a subsequently divesting when a specified level is reached can be explored as a policy option. Published - August 15, 2026 08:15 pm IST