Shailesh Lakhani and Abheek Anand quit Peak XV amid investment strategy shift
The move comes as the venture capital firm looks to take a stringent approach to investments in the country.
Peak XV’s Managing Directors Abheek Anand and Shailesh Lakhani are leaving the venture capital firm, almost two years after it broke ties with its US partner Sequoia Capital, in what will be a big blow to one of India's biggest venture capital companies.
Lakhani, who was with Peak XV for over 17 years, sits on the boards of 15 portfolio companies including Zetwerk, Ixigo, and HealthKart, among others. While there's no clarity on what happens next, Lakhani is expected to continue to be on the boards of these companies for some time.
Anand, on the other hand, led investments in Slice, Blinkit (when it was Grofers), Cuemath among others.
Peak XV (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA) also slashed its managements fees and trimmed the carried interest from 30% to 20%. Carried interest refers to the share of a fund’s profits that are paid to its general partners.
The development comes just a couple of months after the VC cut the size of its biggest and latest fund and signalled a cautionary stance on further growth-stage investments.
In a post on X, Lakhani cited that the reason he chose to leave the firm right now was because he reached the professional goals he had set for himself.
"'Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.' So, I’m off to do those things— and maybe finally fix my sleep score, read some classics, and embrace the joy of unstructured time. At home, our boys are growing up fast, and they deserve more of my presence (and a lot more math homework). And professionally, I’ve reached the goals that I once set for myself, leaving me with both deep gratitude and a pull toward new challenges—ones I have yet to define but can’t wait to explore," he said in the post.
Additionally, the firm is also ramping up exits from its portfolio companies. Most recently, it sold about a 1% stake in software-as-a-service firm Freshworks for $51.5 million.
Edited by Jyoti Narayan
