Lightrock India, the investor that has backed startups such as Shiprocket, PharmEasy and Dunzo, is set to lose its key partner and CFO, Kushal Agrawal, two people aware of the developments said. His exit is the latest in a series of exits at the company.
Internal differences over how the fund should operate were the primary reason behind Agrawal’s departure, per sources.
Agrawal, who has spent over a decade at Lightrock India, is crucial to the investor as he was one of the founding team members when the London-headquartered private equity player was setting up operations in India as Aspada over 10 years ago. The investor was earlier known as LGT Lightstone Aspada but was rebranded to Lightrock in 2021.
The internal differences have also delayed Lightrock India's plans to raise $600-700 million for a fund that would invest in India, and would be independent of the global entity. Now that CFO Agrawal will be moving on, there is no clarity on what will happen to Lightrock India's fundraising initiatives.
"Recent personnel changes have not had an impact on Lightrock India’s fundraising and investor relations activities. These functions are covered by other team members with the support of Lightrock’s global platform, which is based across the company’s Zurich and London offices," Lightrock said in response to queries.
"For context, Lightrock India has raised capital and deployed close to $500m from its Luxembourg based fund over the last three years," the company added.
While Agrawal confirmed his departure to Moneycontrol, he refused that he was leaving over internal differences.
Other exits
Apart from Agrawal, even Saleem Asaria, partner at Lightrock India has also stepped back from daily operations but continues to remain a Lightrock India employee, sources told Moneycontrol.
“What you have been told is completely false and I continue in my existing position at Lightrock (India),” Asaria told Moneycontrol over WhatsApp.
In September 2022, Ashish Garg, principal, quit Lightrock India and joined Zyla Health as its Chief Business Officer (CBO). Zyla Health is run by Khushboo Aggarwal, who is also Garg’s wife.
More recently, Raghav Rungta, principal, also quit Lightrock India to pursue other plans, one of the people cited above said.
All the departures mean that there are just two active partners for Lightrock in India now – Kartik Srivatsa and Vaidhehi Ravindran, as Asaria has stepped away from daily operations. Ravindran used to sit on Dunzo’s board but stepped down in October, as reported earlier. While Srivatsa has been a part of Lightrock India since 2012, Ravindran joined the investor in 2016, as per their LinkedIn profiles.
Lightrock India, which also has Porter, Scaler, Dehaat and others in its portfolio invests between $10 and $50 million in companies in India.
These developments come at a time when some of Lightrock India's portfolio companies are struggling. Dunzo and PharmEasy are both cash-strapped and are awaiting a fresh round of capital to keep operations afloat.
Larger trend
The slew of exits at Lightrock India comes at a time when several other VC firms have also seen their partners depart. In October, it was reported that Samir Sood, founder of Venture Highway, the VC firm that backs Meesho, MPL, Sharechat and others, has stepped away as a partner at the firm.
In September, Orios’ Venture Partners’ Managing Partners Anup Jain and Rajeev Suri also quit abruptly. Orios backs PharmEasy and was an early investor in the troubled company GoMechanic, among others.
In the same month, Rebright Partners’ partner Brij Bhushan also quit to start his own AI venture. Before that, in August, media reports suggested that Siddharth Talwar, Jeremy Wenokur and Prashant Mehta were preparing to leave Lightbox, which backs Dunzo, Rebel Foods, Waycool and more.
At the beginning of this year, Together Fund, led by Freshworks’ Girish Mathrubootham, also saw its partner Avinash Raghava depart to start SaaSBoomi.
Note to readers: The story has been updated to include one paragraph carrying Lightrock's views which reached Moneycontrol three days after publishing the story.
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