Since it is a well-known fact that the majority of companies in India are in the form of family companies wherein close family members establish and company and manage and control its affairs on a day to day basis. This calls for active corporate governance measures to be used to monitor such companies. Institutional investors' activism is one of the tools for exercising such corporate governance measures. Shareholder activism was almost a non-existent concept in India until the past few years. As a consequence of the global economic crisis, there was a need to adopt pro-active corporate governance strategies, and shareholder activism is one of them. This paper will be divided into three parts. The first part will give a general introduction to understand who are institutional investors and what are the roles played by them to promote corporate governance. The second part will give an insight into the existing regulations which impose stewardship responsibilities on various types of institutional investors and compare its origin to the UK Stewardship Code. The third part will discuss whether the adoption of the UK based Stewardship regime in India is an effective corporate governance measure?.