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The coronavirus pandemic has triggered a race for disruptive innovation in diagnostics, new therapies and novel vaccines, but the global life sciences industry was already expected to reach more than $2 trillion in gross value by 2023, up from $1.6 trillion before the crisis.

Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, who served as the British Ambassador to China and later wrote a memoir titled Diplomat in Peace and War recalled the following conversation: “Before I left England for China in 1936 a friend told me that there exists a Chinese curse—‘May you live in interesting times’. If so, our generation has certainly witnessed that curse’s fulfilment.

Family offices in India have professionalised at an astonishing rate in the four years since Campden Family Connect was founded, but engaging the next generation remains a key concern and the coronavirus pandemic is causing pain as portfolios lose value.

The fourth anniversary this week of the pioneering global membership community for ultra-high net worth families in India was the ideal opportunity to take stock of what the family office space has achieved in the country, how it is looking now and where it can progress.

The year of 2019 was one when many of the six impossible things before breakfast remain unresolved—with the shining exception of Brexit, and the wider resolution of domestic politics. We can still feel the political earthquake which struck the UK last month—we cannot yet see the effect of it. Most political earthquakes, when they happen, are scarcely discerned, and even those which are perceived for what they are, do not easily reveal the new pathways created from the changed landscape.