Three senior managing directors, Ashish Agrawal, Ishaan Mittal and Tejeshwi Sharma, have stepped down from Peak XV Partners to launch a new venture capital firm together. All three of them took to LinkedIn to share the update via posts.
What triggered the exits
According to a report by Moneycontrol, all partners were broadly aligned until about a week before the exits, after which disagreements escalated over a span of five to six days, culminating in Agrawal’s decision to quit abruptly. Ishaan Mittal and Tejeshwi Sharma followed soon after, the Moneycontrol report added.
Sources cited by Moneycontrol said the disagreements centred on two economic issues: incentives and payouts linked to the outsized outcome from Groww, and Agrawal’s share of carried interest in Peak XV’s new fund.
Financialexpress.com could not independently verify any of these claims. We have reached out to all of them. The story will be updated as soon as we get a reply.
What sparked the differences
While Groww was widely seen as a landmark success for Peak XV, the Moneycontrol report indicated that venture returns are the outcome of collective decision-making, spanning deal sourcing, capital deployment, follow-on investments and portfolio support, adding that the disagreements were economic in nature.
According to Moneycontrol, the differences were primarily between Agrawal and Peak XV’s senior partners, Mittal and Sharma, who were part of the growth funds and not the new venture fund, and were not directly involved, but Agrawal’s exit became the trigger for the three long-time friends to leave together.
Here is a quick overview of the former Peak XV Partners’ managing directors, Ashish Agrawal, Ishaan Mittal and Tejeshwi Sharma
Ishaan Mittal: “We want to build the next great investment firm”
Ishaan Mittal, who spent 13 years at Peak XV and its predecessor Sequoia Capital India, announced his exit in a LinkedIn post, describing the move as the start of a new entrepreneurial chapter with partners he has known for decades.
“After 13 extraordinary years, I am moving on from Peak XV Partners to start a new venture capital firm with my two partners, whom I have known for decades,” Mittal wrote on LinkedIn, referring to Agrawal and Sharma. He added that the decision came with “immense gratitude and excitement in equal measure”.
Mittal, a managing director on the growth investing side, has been associated with investments such as Razorpay, Mamaearth, OneCard and Awfis. In his post, he said the trio believed that “the next great investment firm in the world will come out of India”.
According to his LinkedIn page, Mittal holds a B.Tech in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi and an MBA from Harvard Business School, and was also a semester exchange student at the University of British Columbia.
He began his career at Boston Consulting Group, joined Sequoia Capital India in 2011, and went on to become a managing director at Peak XV Partners, where he spent nearly a decade and served on the boards of companies such as Razorpay, Mamaearth, CarDekho, Finova Capital and OneCard.
Ashish Agrawal: Fintech wins and a mutual separation
Ashish Agrawal, whose departure was the first among the three, was a key figure on the venture investing side at Peak XV, focusing on fintech and consumer businesses. He was closely associated with Groww, one of the firm’s most successful recent exits, which went public in November last year and delivered more than 60x paper gains.
In a LinkedIn post announcing his decision, Agrawal said he was taking “the entrepreneurial plunge” after 13 years at the firm and would be starting a new venture capital platform with Mittal and Sharma. He described his years at Peak XV and Sequoia Capital India as formative, both professionally and personally, and said the firm was “stronger than ever”.
Peak XV, however, has acknowledged that Agrawal’s exit followed a disagreement over economics and payouts. Managing director Shailendra J Singh told The Economic Times that while the separation was amicable, there was “a particular disagreement” that led the firm and Agrawal to part ways in the interests of the institution and its limited partners.
According to his LinkedIn page, Agrawal has spent over 13 years at Peak XV Partners and its predecessor Sequoia Capital, where he rose to managing director and built a strong track record in venture investing.
An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, where he completed integrated bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science and engineering, Agrawal was also an exchange student at the National University of Singapore.
He began his career with stints in research and technology roles at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, CentraleSupélec and Microsoft, before co-founding mobility startup Yatayat. He later worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and was part of the Kauffman Fellows programme.
At Peak XV, he led or worked closely on investments such as Groww and several fintech and consumer-facing companies, and has served on multiple startup boards over the years.
Tejeshwi Sharma: SaaS investor and longtime collaborator
Tejeshwi Sharma, who focused on SaaS and fintech investments such as Cred and Whatfix, exited shortly after Agrawal and Mittal. In a post on X, Sharma said he was stepping away from Peak XV to build a new firm with partners he described as friends of nearly 15 years.
Like Mittal, Sharma’s public comments emphasised long-standing personal relationships and the ambition to build a new investment platform, rather than disagreements within Peak XV.
According to his LinkedIn page, Sharma has spent over a decade investing across SaaS, enterprise software and fintech, most recently as a managing director at Peak XV Partners and its predecessor Sequoia Capital.
He joined Sequoia Capital in 2012, returned to the firm after a stint as investment manager for India at Tencent, and rose to lead several growth and late-stage bets. Sharma has served on the boards of companies such as Atlan, Chargebee, FloBiz, Hevo Data, Moglix, JustCall, Scapia and Whatfix, leading or co-leading multiple Series B and C rounds, and has also been associated with healthcare genomics firm MedGenome.
He holds a B.Tech in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar, and was a student exchange participant at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Earlier in his career, he worked at Bain & Company before moving into venture capital.
Why they left: Economics, ambition and a leaner partnership
While the trio’s public statements focused on entrepreneurship and long-term ambition, Peak XV’s leadership has said the exits were triggered by differences over economics and executive payouts. Singh told ET that as firms evolve, institutions sometimes require individuals to “put the institution above themselves”, and that disagreements on this issue led to the separation.
The firm is also moving towards a leaner partnership structure, with seven to eight general partners, down from 12 last year. Singh told ET that this would create room for more AI-native investors, as capital allocation shifts sharply towards artificial intelligence. Fintech, which once accounted for 35–40% of Peak XV’s investments, now makes up about 14% of its current venture fund.
Alongside the exits, Peak XV has promoted Abhishek Mohan to managing director and general partner, and elevated Saipriya Sarangan to chief operating officer.