Opinion Dear CEOs, Gen Z is watching — your silence has a price

That silence has been the norm. Across India, Kenya, Bangladesh and Nepal, Gen Z-led movements have reshaped the institutional environment businesses operate in. The triggers for these movements and their demands vary, but they concern inequalities, corruption, and democratic rights. Despite calls for business leaders to voice their support, they remain silent. The question worth asking is not just what businesses risk by staying silent, but what they stand to gain by engaging with a generation that is participative, vocal, and impossible to ignore.

A generation with its own playbook

What set the CJP apart was as much its style as its substance. Protesters stayed peaceful in the face of provocation, invoked constitutional rights, and reclaimed the language of democracy for themselves. When branded anti-national, they wore patriotism openly on their sleeves and flipped the narrative back on their critics. The demands were serious, structural, even, but the tone was anything but grim: Dancing, singing, livestreaming, and memes were integral parts of their protests. The country watched, largely with disbelief, as a generation it thought it understood turned out to be something else entirely.

Business leaders were no better attuned to this shift than anyone else. Where some spoke, it was often to dismiss rather than engage. For example, Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu criticised the movement as a “malicious agenda” hindering national progress.

Why businesses should engage with Gen Z

Three things are at stake for businesses that sit this out.

Gen Z’s demands for fair economic opportunity and better governance are, in effect, demands for the conditions that make growth possible. Institutional voids — corruption, nepotism, weak governance — raise the cost of doing business and erode performance. Indian companies spent roughly $5 billion on CSR in 2024-25 alone; political and bureaucratic interference routinely dilutes its impact. Corruption compromises the policies and procedures behind public goods; nepotism hands opportunity to the less capable; economic inequality breeds poor civic behaviour and drags down competitiveness. Gen Z’s demands are, in a sense, asking businesses to help fix the very frictions that hold them back.

The second is talent. This generation will supply the next wave of employees, entrepreneurs, and leaders needed to realise the demographic dividend. Its values — sustainability, social impact, work-life balance, workplace respect — sit uneasily with a corporate culture still built around putting life on hold for a career. Labelled lazy and entitled, Gen Z has pushed back with “quiet quitting”, “acting your wage”, and “bare minimum Mondays”. Read correctly, these are not just complaints; they are a preview of what the future workforce will expect and refuse to accept. A few organisations have taken note. EY, for instance, has piloted a reverse-mentoring programme to help leadership listen across generations.

The third is the market itself. Gen Z is already one of the world’s most consequential consumer segments, both in spending power and cultural influence. It makes up close to a third of the global population and roughly 40 per cent of global consumers, with spending projected to reach $12 trillion by 2030. In India alone, the Gen Z population, over 377 million, exceeds the entire population of the United States. Their preferences are steadily reshaping expectations around sustainability, transparency, and product design. During the CJP protests, this influence played out visibly: Supporters repurposed campaign imagery from Netflix, LinkedIn, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Lakmē into satirical posters calling out these brands’ silence.

What businesses can do

None of this requires businesses to endorse every demand of every movement. It requires businesses to stop mistaking silence for neutrality. Silence is a choice, and increasingly a visible, punishable one.

There are more worthwhile choices available. Business leaders can speak in support of the governance reforms Gen Z is demanding, much as executives globally have done on issues like racial inequality and gun violence. But such statements only land when they are seen as authentic; a company that invests heavily in education-focused CSR, for instance, earns credibility by also speaking up for educational reform. Leaders can likewise voice support for transparency and accountability in government, or push back against efforts to vilify young protesters and encourage a reasoned dialogue.

There is also room for more concrete contributions. As India’s public examination system comes under scrutiny following the protests, businesses could help redesign it around creativity and problem-solving rather than rote memorisation. They can partner with educational institutions to align curricula with where industry is actually headed. IBM’s employer-led skilling initiatives offer one model of how this can simultaneously ease talent shortages and lift productivity.

Companies can also redirect existing resources rather than simply add new commitments. Indian firms already channel a large share of their CSR budgets into education, skilling, and livelihood programmes. These could be steered more deliberately toward regions with weak economic and employment growth, alongside broadening their hiring net to reach tier-2 and tier-3 cities. It is also worth auditing whether a company’s own products, services, or spending are inadvertently being used for antidemocratic ends and correcting course where they are. Sometimes, the simplest move is to pause: During the CJP protests, FAE Beauty stepped back from its marketing campaigns to keep public attention on the movement’s message rather than its own.

Businesses do not have to agree with every demand these movements raise, and they do not need to pretend otherwise. But each movement is a signal — a clear statement of what an enormous, increasingly powerful generation values. Companies that read that signal early stand to build lasting goodwill. Those that ignore it are, in effect, betting against their own future customers, employees, and shareholders. It is not a good bet.

Bapuji is a Professor of Management and Gourlay Fellow in Business Ethics at the Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne. Agarwal is a Lecturer and Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the King’s Business School, King’s College London