The corporate governance of Indian unicorns

Arjya B. Majumdar

Chapter 5 in Advancing Corporate Governance Research, 2026, pp 71-100 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Indian companies have traditionally been closely held, controlled and monitored by concentrated shareholding structures, usually within families. Controlling shareholders – promoters – have usually played an all-pervasive role in the day-to-day management of the company. As a result, institutional investors such as venture capital and private equity funds, often seen as “outsiders,” would look to contractual measures to curb promoter opportunism. However, the rise of an entrepreneurial culture, coupled with regulatory incentives in India, have led to the creation of numerous unicorns – startups that have achieved a high valuation. This chapter reviews the shareholding structure of such unicorns, particularly the balance of corporate control between promoters and institutional shareholders. We analyze the corporate governance rights contracted between promoters and institutional shareholders of such unicorns. The purpose is to ascertain whether unicorns have ownership structures that are different from other companies, thus creating an exception to the “insider” model of corporate governance seen in most Indian companies. We find that increased “outsider” shareholding is directly linked to the creation of more professionally managed unicorns. We also demonstrate that as Indian companies attain unicorn status, they are less likely to maintain a “closed” or an insider model of corporate governance, instead moving to a more dispersed model of shareholding with multiple institutional investors. As unicorns approach a dispersed model, their governance also changes, increasingly resembling publicly listed companies, including the appointment of independent directors, heightened reporting requirements, and affirmative voting rights requiring minority investor support for critical decisions.

Keywords: Corporate governance; Unicorns; Startups; Shareholder protection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035324958
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035324965.00013 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22953_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().