Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of paternalistic leadership of the boss on the trust of the subordinate. Design/methodology/approach – The present study adopted survey method to test the hypotheses. Paternalistic leadership style was measured by a 24-item scale developed by Cheng et al. (2004). Trust was measured by a four-item scale by Schoorman and Ballinger (2006). Data were collected from a sample of 253 respondents. Findings – The results show that in India, paternalistic leadership style leads to subordinate trust. The result further found that though benevolent and moral leadership leads to trust, authoritarian leadership does not lead to formation of trust. Practical implications – The study has important implications in areas like managing leader–member relations, leadership training and team efficacy. Originality/value – Leadership researchers in Indian context have largely adopted etic approach which attempts to generalize Western leadership theory to Indian context. However, uncritical adaptation of techniques developed in Western context may not be effective in the Indian cultural environment. The concept of paternalistic leadership was developed in Chinese context, but as India scores high on paternalism, the present study uses the paternalistic leadership style to study its effect on subordinate’s trust on leader. Keywords Autocratic leadership, Benevolent leadership, Moral leadership, Paternalistic leadership, Subordinate trust Paper type Research paper