Ashish Agrawal was the centre of attention at an industry event hosted by Peak XV in December 2025.

Fresh off taking Groww to the IPO milestone, Agrawal was in the thick of it on the night — founders, other investors, representatives of industry bodies and law firms huddling around him, more than any other partner from the firm. It showed that Agrawal had well and truly become a vital cog in the Peak XV machine.

All that changed in a matter of weeks.

“I remember celebrating Ashish’s breakthrough performance (Groww IPO exit) which put Peak XV right there at the top of India’s VC industry in terms of exits. It was the most successful exit by any VC fund in India,” a partner working with a marquee global VC firm told Inc42 this week.

Like much of the startup ecosystem, the VC world was stunned by what had happened at Peak XV Partners with the exits of its three partners — managing directors Ashish Agrawal, Ishaan Mittal and Tejeshwi Sharma. It is part of an exodus from the major VC fund that began close to two years ago.

“There was not much chatter or shock in investor groups on Whatsapp around this. While this may look like an unprecedented turn of events for the outside world, nothing about these exits was so shocking,” an early stage venture fund founder said.

According to him, storied firms such as Peak XV Partners which carry the global legacy of Sequoia Capital and have a portfolio of 400 companies are bound to see partner churns especially around the time of successful exits and an upcoming funds raise. The Peak XV portfolio includes 50 unicorns with 36 IPOs as of December 2025, the firm says on its website.

“These large funds are pretty much the corporates with power concentration centres and whenever any event tries to disturb that power balance whether it may be the matter of economics or power, the exits follow,” another VC industry insider said.

Inc42 spoke to over a dozen VCs — partners and principals at large funds — and founders of Peak XV’s portfolio companies to understand the pattern of why one of the largest VC funds in the country has seen at least half of its partners leave the firm in the last 12-18 months.

More than eight partners quit Peak XV Partners in that time. Apart from Agrawal, Sharma and Mittal’s departures, the investment firm has seen the exits of partners like Pieter Kemps, Shailesh Lakhani, Abheek Anand, Shraeyansh Thakur, Anandamoy Roychowdhury.

Sources privy to the churn at Peak XV Partners told us that nearly 50 employees in addition to the partners have also quit their jobs across marketing, product and advisory roles.

“Ajay Gore who was the operating partner at Peak XV until sometime ago is doing his own startup now. Prachi Pawar was another CXO who left in 2024. There have been exits at Surge ( Peak XV’s early stage investments vertical) too,” one of the sources said.

Inc42 reached out to Peak XV Partners with detailed queries. The VC firm declined to comment on our queries regarding the partner, employee exits and directed us towards its official release that stated the recent departures were in the best interests of the limited partners and long-term interests of the firm.

Multiple sources say these exits were not driven by underperformance. On the contrary, the departing partners were often among the firm’s most visible operators on the ground.

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