Might the internet generation be embracing family businesses?

To work for the family business making some seemingly insignificant wiggett might not seem the most glamorous job for the digitally savvy next generation, but KPMG reckons that many of them are keen to use their digital skills within their family companies.

David Bywater, a KPMG partner and enterprise specialist, says “millennials” – those born after 1980 – want to have the chance to make a difference for the businesses they are inheriting.

“In the past, family businesses have often struggled to encourage the next generation to take over the reins,” he says. “However, a new, entrepreneurial generation is emerging and one that has been immersed in technology and the internet.”

Sighting the case of the Arora Group, a UK hotel business, KPMG says that Sanjay Arora, the son of the founder Surinder Arora, is evidence of this trend. Sanjay, managing director of Grove HR, a group that runs four of the hotels in the family’s portfolio, had no issues about working for the family business and reckons that his digital skills are having an impact on the entrepreneurial efforts of the overall business.

“I think that being a part of the ‘internet generation’ definitely gives me a different insight into the hospitality industry…Our (Arora Group) strategy on this is something I’d like to get involved with and shape going forward,” says Sanjay.

But as Family Capital reported recently, such appeal for the next generation of Germany’s Mittelstand businesses appear less apparent. Perhaps it’s time for them to talk up their digital futures to try to lure the next generation…