About Ashoka NextGen Leaders
Where legacy meets critical thinking.
A student-led institution for studying family enterprise as a question of governance, succession, identity, and public value — founded to give students a serious space to think about these responsibilities before they are forced to confront them in real life.
The founding idea
Some questions deserve more than informal conversations.
For many students, enterprise is not an abstract career choice. It is a living institution shaped by family history, employees, communities, reputation, and decisions made across generations.
ANG exists because those questions deserve more than informal conversations.
What we are building
To build Ashoka's first dedicated undergraduate community for family enterprise, succession, governance, and stewardship.
Who we hope to shape
To prepare thoughtful next-generation leaders who can engage with inherited institutions critically, ethically, and responsibly.
How we work
Peer circles, case labs, speakers, mentorship, and student research — organised across five verticals and governed by a written charter.
What advances a nation or a community is not so much to prop up its weakest and most helpless members, but to lift up the best and the most gifted, so as to make them of the greatest service to the country.
Why Ashoka
Family enterprise requires exactly the kind of thinking Ashoka was built for.
Succession is not only a business question. It involves psychology, economics, law, ethics, history, organisational behaviour, and political economy. ANG brings these perspectives together in a student-led setting.
The club creates a space where students develop the tools, language, and perspective to lead with rigour and responsibility, grounded in Ashoka's commitment to critical thinking and ethical inquiry.
The founding rationale
Family enterprise is not a niche concern in India. It is a leadership classroom.
India's family enterprises are central to the country's economic and social life. They employ millions, shape local communities, and often carry reputations built over decades.
Yet students connected to such enterprises rarely have a structured undergraduate forum to discuss the questions they will eventually face: how the next generation earns legitimacy, how family and management should be separated, how values survive growth, and when tradition should be preserved or challenged.
ANG was created to make these questions discussable, rigorous, and shared.
What ANG is not
A definition by exclusion.
- Not a closed club for business families.
- Not a networking shortcut.
- Not a placement society.
- Not a space for celebrating wealth or inheritance.
- It is a space for studying responsibility.
While inheritance brings opportunities, it also carries immense responsibility.
Founders' note
Founded by students preparing for intergenerational responsibility.
Suryansh Dalmia
Co-Founder
Fifth-generation member of MLD Group. His experience preparing to re-enter a multigenerational enterprise while at Ashoka is the direct impetus for this club.
Madhav Wadhwani
Co-Founder
Second-generation member of Natraj Exports. His focus on governance, professionalisation, and institutional design shapes ANG's academic and operational foundations.