Sequoia’s Former India Unit Rocked by a Bitter Split Over Power & Profit Shares

The fight led to the departure of 3 partners & sent Peak XV Partners scrambling to rescue a crucial fundraise

In the last week of January, Shailendra Singh (right), head of the $9 billion Indian venture firm Peak XV Partners, sat down for dinner with a younger partner, Ashish Agrawal, one of the firm’s top-performing investors. Agrawal wanted to apologize. “Sorry it is happening this way, sorry I have to do this,” Agrawal said.

He was apologizing for quitting the firm so abruptly, and at such a sensitive moment. Peak, which until it was spun out in 2023 was the Indian unit of Sequoia Capital, was trying to close on more than $1 billion in its first fundraise as an independent firm, and Agrawal’s departure threatened to delay the deal, or worse.

Peak’s two other senior partners, GV Ravishankar and Mohit Bhatnagar, had also met Agrawal over dinner, asking him to reconsider his decision.

For Singh, though, Agrawal had a lot more to apologize for than the timing. Their break was precipitated by what Singh considered an outrageous demand from Agrawal: a profit share of as much as $200 million on the breakout success of fintech company Groww (similar to Robinhood), which netted the firm and its limited partners $2 billion. Agrawal had led the Groww deal, one of the firm’s biggest-ever wins.

But Agrawal wasn’t offering apologies on that front. And his departure, along with two colleagues, set Singh on a frantic scramble to assuage nervous LPs. Two senior partners made a special trip to New York. Singh invited several other departed executives to rejoin the firm. He kept the deal on track, and Peak last week announced it had raised $1.3 billion.

Closing the fund was a big milestone for the 49-year-old Singh. But the acrimonious public break-up with Agrawal, 38, was highly unusual in an industry of private partnerships, and has left a lot of bruises. The split sheds fresh light on internal tensions that had long bubbled under the surface at Sequoia India, which for many years has been a dominant force in the Indian startup world despite delivering uneven returns.

The Peak drama also provides a rare window into the destructive tensions that can arise in a big VC firm around apportioning spoils — and power.

Two separate former colleagues of Agrawal’s had nearly the same words to describe the situation: “incredibly stupid.” “I cannot believe the greed and the short-sightedness. How both parties have dealt with it is so stupid,” one said.

This account of Agrawal’s departure and how Peak is trying to curtail damage is based on interviews with seven current and former investors at Peak XV. None agreed to speak on the record.

The Sequoia Legacy