India’s Peak XV sees more senior departures after recent IPO exits
Welcome back,
Peak XV, the VC firm formerly known as Sequoia India and Southeast Asia, is once again in the news for management departures following the exit of three senior personnel.
Partners Ashish Agrawal (13 years), Ishaan Mittal (9 years) and Tejeshwi Sharma (7 years) are leaving to start their own fund.
Managing Director Shailendra Singh told TechCrunch the trio left due to an internal disagreement, which he did not elaborate on. The issue was reportedly related to compensation. Peak XV had a hugely successful end to 2025 with five portfolio companies going public, including Groww, which made the company more than $1 billion in profits, long-term bet Pine Labs and e-commerce company Meesho.
Agrawal led the Groww deal, so it isn’t hard to imagine disagreements which might cause him to go solo with his own fund.
Singh played down the exits, saying such departures were not uncommon at large, multi-stage venture firms. For once, I agree.
VC by its very nature is about finding a handful of huge wins that return a fund handsomely, allowing partners to make bets and give the LPs whose money they manage outsized profits. Hence the windfall generational wins like Groww must be shared around. Striking a balance can’t be easy.
But Peak XV is a fund that intrigues from the outside with big talk, big stakes and seemingly frequent disagreements.
One year ago, two even more senior partners left the firm. Shailesh Lakhani, a 17-year veteran of Peak XV, and Abheek Anand, who co-led investments in Southeast Asia. India-based Harshjit Sethi and Singapore-based Peter Kiemps also departed. The firm now has seven MDs, down from 12 at its peak last year, Economic Times wrote.
When Peak XV broke away from the global Sequoia family in 2023, I wrote that we would finally see what the firm and its partners stand for. But nearly three years later, it doesn’t seem tremendously clear.
Yes, the high-profile IPOs have been great and, so far, none of the implosions we saw with Zilingo and GoMechanic. But Singh points to Peak XV’s laser focus on AI deals, which he sees as the future.
All of this feels like Peak XV is still trying to be that US shop out in India and Southeast Asia. Maybe with even more long-timers gone, we will finally see the vision.
Speaking of US funds in Asia, don’t miss our story last week on Y Combinator’s downturn in Asia, despite striking it rich with its first two Indian IPOs.
Have a great week,
Jon
Southeast Asia’s startup scene was rocked by stories of fraud last year, and already we have our first of 2026. Kuldeep Singh Rajput, the former CEO of biotech startup Biofourmis, is set to be charged in Singapore with over seven charges which include falsifying $16 million in invoices from the Ministry of Health.
Biofourmis appeared to be the next breakout startup when it closed a $300 million Series D round in April 2022 which was led by high-profile US investor General Atlantic. But behind the scenes, things weren’t as expected, according to The Straits Times:
Police said between Aug 18, 2021, and Feb 28, 2022, the 34-year-old Indian national had allegedly instigated his staff to falsify company invoices purporting that Biofourmis Singapore had rendered services worth US$16,491,375 (S$20,941,600) to MOH.
Charge sheets state that the invoices were for services relating to the Biovitals Sentinel Platform, which remotely monitors patients and provides clinicians with their vital signs, according to past reports.
Between March 28 and April 25, 2022, Rajput allegedly made, and also instigated others to make, false representations about Biofourmis Holdings and its subsidiaries.
The representations involved false revenue figures and financial statements, and claims that “discussions with the MOH on payment are ongoing”, according to charge sheets.
Singh Rajput is out on $600,000 bail, but both parties have since moved on.
Biofourmis merged with remote health monitoring CopilotIQ in 2024.
Singh Rajput, meanwhile, runs a healthcare startup called Outcomes AI which uses AI to scale nursing care. It has raised over $10 million and has a partnership with SingHealth. It remains to be seen what impact the charges will have on Outcomes AI.
It’s easy to think Uber left Asia when it sold its China business to Didi and its Southeast Asia business to Grab, but that’s not the case as two small but strategic moves last week showed.
The US ride-hailing giant announced plans to launch robotaxi services in Hong Kong, which would be its first autonomous ride market in Asia. Hong Kong is one of 15 cities that it aims to be operational in by the end of this year. Others include Madrid, Houston and Zurich.
Uber also returned to Macau, the special administrative region of China best known for gambling. The company left in 2017, and this is a rare new market launch in Asia. It may be a small market, but I was in Macau last year, and I can tell you it wasn’t easy to get a taxi and pay for it, too.
Again, not major launches but a reminder that Uber is still very much in Asia, and that Asia is still very much part of Uber’s roadmap. Its other markets in the region include Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand.
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