Shailesh Lakhani and Harshjit Sethi, the former managing director of Peak XV Partners (formerly, Sequoia Capital India), have launched an early-stage fund Ambition Capital, which aims to raise $250 million for early-stage investments.
Ambition Capital, which is based in Bengaluru, plans to invest in seed and Series A startups across sectors including AI, fintech, deep-tech and consumer technology. The firm expects to make around 26–30 investments from the fund.
Lakhani and Sethi have teamed up with Mayank Porwal, who left Peak XV Partners in 2023. “They have begun early discussions with potential limited partners (LPs) who are likely to sponsor the fund. Their focus will largely be on early-stage investments across seed and series A rounds,” said a person familiar with the matter.
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Lakhani spent 17 years at Sequoia and his portfolio included the likes of Minimalist, which was acquired by Hindustan Unilever, Ixigo, Truecaller, Zetwerk, OneCard, Polygon, CoinSwitch, among others, Sethi, led the firm’s artificial intelligence (AI) investments and served on the boards of various companies, including Sarvam AI. Prior to this, he made investments in fintech and software companies such as Darwinbox, Turtlemint and BharatPe.
In a separate development, Ashish Agrawal, Ishaan Mittal and Tejeshwi Sharma who exited Peak XV in February are also working on launching an early-stage venture fund which will invest across Series A and Series B rounds.
These departures from Peak XV after it split from Sequoia in 2023 have spread widespread discussions within the venture capital ecosystem about internal dynamics. Managing director Shailendra Singh told Economic Times that the exits of Agarwal, Mittal and Sharma had stemmed from disagreements over the economics of the venture partnership, particularly around how profits from exits would be shared between partners at the firm.
“For many senior venture investors, launching an independent fund often becomes the natural next step once they have built a strong exit pipeline and facilitated cash distributions to LPs,” said another person from the industry.
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Agrawal, the big win from Groww where Peak invested $30-35 million and is currently sitting on nearly $2 billion was a big confidence booster and aided his ask for better economics in the fund, according to the Economic Times report, which cites people familiar with the matter.
“Now that India is seeing a bunch of IPOs and exits, investors are able to show liquidity… this is changing the dynamics at funds as VCs build their track records. What will be key is that there needs to be clear differentiation and focus areas for LPs to get on independent, first-time general partners (GPs),” said another investor who branched out from a fund.
