Methodology · How Marwari Business Houses Divided
How this list is compiled
Documented date
WHAT THIS IS. Marwari business families whose division — a group split among branches, a branch separating, a family firm dissolved — is stated by a court judgment, the group's own record or a named publication. Each family appears once, at its first documented division; every division it has is on its page, with its source. WHAT COUNTS. The cited sentence must state the division itself. Seven researched entries did not, and are left out: the dispute over the M. P. Birla estate (2004), which concerns a will, not a division; Madhupati Singhania leaving the family in 1998, which is one person's departure; a 1934 separation asserted by a party in a court filing rather than found by the court; the Dalmia sons "parting ways" dated to 1948 by a source that places the year wrongly; the Jindal companies' division among four sons, whose source gives no year; a second Bangur settlement in 2002 over control of one company; and a second report of the Bangur division of 1991, cited once. ORDER. By the year of the family's first documented division, oldest first. Families with divisions in the same year are ordered by name, which carries no judgement. The year is what the source states; where a source reports a division as settled over months, the year is the one it gives. Where sources disagree the contemporary report is used: Tehelka (2004) dates the Birla division to a 1988 meeting in Kolkata, but India Today reported the settlement in September 1987, and that is the year shown. SOURCES. Supreme Court and High Court judgments (through Indian Kanoon), the Bajaj group's own timeline, and named publications — Open, India Today, Business Standard, DNA, The Hindu BusinessLine. No encyclopaedia is cited. Each source's own words are printed beside the division on the family's page. THIS IS A RECORD OF EVENTS, NOT A JUDGEMENT OF ANYONE IN THEM. It says what divided and when. It does not say who was right.
Frequently asked
- What decides the order?
- This list is ranked on a documented date basis — see the methodology above for what that means for this list specifically.
- What counts as a source?
- Only a citation that is inline and expanded on the ranked subject's own page — never a source cited on this list alone.
- Why might an entry be missing?
- A rank is withdrawn, not renumbered, when the subject it named is no longer published. The gap stays visible rather than being closed.
- How often does this list change?
- A new dated edition, not a silent edit, is how the ranking itself changes.