Photo Courtesy of Saurabh Kaushik
Most high-profile coaches build visibility through scale, public programs, and personal branding. A quieter segment does the opposite, and it is growing inside a market that has become large enough to measure. The 2025 ICF Global Coaching Study, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers across 127 countries, put global coaching revenue at roughly $5.34 billion and counted a record 122,974 practitioners, up more than 50 percent since 2019, with leadership and executive coaching the largest single area of specialization.
Saurabh Kaushik, an India-based business and life strategist, works at the private end of that market. His practice is referral-based and built around one-to-one engagements with founders, business owners, and senior decision-makers. He limits the number of clients he takes on, which he says allows for deeper, more sustained work on each case, and he describes his method in three stages: clarity, strategy, and execution. Much of the work involves questions common to multi-generational businesses, including succession, governance, and long-term strategic alignment.
Family-owned and founder-led companies dominate many economies, and the moments that decide their future, a handover between generations, a change in ownership, a move into a new market, rarely turn on information alone. They turn on judgment made under pressure and often in private. Advisers who position themselves around those moments are betting that a small number of high-stakes decisions matter more to a business than a broad program of training ever could.
A deliberately private model
That model is difficult to assess from the outside. Because engagements are confidential and frequently governed by non-disclosure agreements, client results are largely self-reported. The limitation is not unique to any one practitioner. Industry researchers note that the sector’s most-cited return figures rest on older or survey-based data.
Kaushik’s bespoke private coaching is a natural outcome of the changing global wealth landscape.
“As businesses grow in scale and leadership becomes increasingly complex, founders, family business owners, and serial entrepreneurs seek something few environments can offer: a confidential space to think without judgment. At the highest levels, the challenge is rarely a lack of answers, but the ability to see through complexity with clarity,” Kaushik said. “Meaningful dialogue, thoughtful questions, and honest reflection help leaders make decisions that consistently align with their vision and values. The most enduring decisions are seldom prescribed; they emerge from deeper clarity.”
The ICF study draws on more than 10,000 coaches across 127 countries, and reports rising practitioner counts in every region. Growth in demand has not been confined to North America and Western Europe, the field’s traditional centers, even if those markets still hold the largest share of practitioners.
In Kaushik’s case, the professional recognitions are a matter of record. He was named India’s Premier Business Coach by Entrepreneur at the IMBC Summit in 2021, and received an award under the same title from the World HRD Congress in 2022. He is a certified Six Sigma practitioner and has spoken at Indian institutional forums connected with bodies including the Confederation of Indian Industry and the PHD Chamber of Commerce. Like most coaching credentials, these attest to recognition and training in the field.
A market that has professionalized
Coaching has professionalized quickly: the ICF reports that most practitioners now hold or expect to hold a recognized credential, and clients increasingly treat credentialing as a baseline. Against that trend, an invitation-only practice is a deliberate counter-position, trading scale and public visibility for exclusivity and confidentiality.
For now, that approach occupies a distinct niche in a field still divided between scale-driven, digitally delivered programs and smaller advisory practices built on long-term relationships.
