The apology was accepted. So was the resignation.
Two weeks before Peak XV was set to announce its first $1.3 billion fund on 20 February, Shailendra Singh had a timing problem. Ashish Agarwal, 37, one of the firm’s high-profile investors and the mind behind its wildly profitable bet on now-listed fintech Groww, had quit. Agarwal later offered to take back the resignation, conceding that launching a decade-long fund while a star partner walks out is not ideal. Limited partnersLimited partnersInvestors in venture capital funds like returns. They also like adults in the room.
Singh declined to reverse it.
That decision triggered one of the messiest departures in the firm’s history, arguably messier than anything in its earlier incarnation as Sequoia Capital India.
The backdrop: Agarwal’s $32 million investment in Groww from a $695 million fund is now worth roughly $1.8 billion on paper. In India’s still-nascent venture industry, that is the sort of trade that defines careers and rewrites internal power equations.
According to multiple people familiar with the matter, Agarwal had been seeking clarity on the economics. How profits are divided among partners, who decides, and what their eventual share would look like. Discussions dragged till December. People close to the firm say Singh’s view was that Agarwal had already been offered the maximum possible economics, plus a path to join him, GV Ravishankar and Mohit Bhatnagar in running the franchise.
Accounts diverge after that.
Some sources allege Agarwal sought a nine-figure payout—terms the firm considered untenable. Others insist he made no explicit monetary demand when he indicated he wanted to leave, late January.
Those aligned with Peak XV reject the suggestion that he was shortchanged. In the fund that backed Groww—raised before Agarwal became a partner—he was retrospectively granted partner-level economics and the largest carry allocation, which is the share of profits, in that vehicle, “by a significant margin,” according to one person. In subsequent funds, they say, he again received the highest share. “He was already looking at triple-digit millions (dollars) over time if he stayed,” the person said. “Then he wanted triple-digit millions more.” For Agarwal, though, his ask was as much about the path to parity in the partnership. The Ken could not independently verify these claims.