The management of Sequoia Capital India said it will be business as usual and it will continue to focus on the strategy it had been following for the past decade.
The company on Tuesday announced that Abhay Pandey, G V Ravishankar, Mohit Bhatnagar, Shailendra Singh and V T Bharadwaj will now be responsible for managing its business in India, even as Sumir Chadha, K P Balaraj, S K Jain and Sandeep Singhal have resigned to form a firm devoted to public market investing in India.
“We have a strong focus on venture, growth and late stage investments, taking exposures between $2 million and $30 million and we will continue that strategy,” Abhay Pande told Business Standard. A statement from Sequoia said the team of five deserves credit and recognition for what Sequoia Capital had done in India in the last few years. “They have been involved with a majority of the companies in all of the Sequoia Capital funds in India and have worked closely as partners with the entrepreneurs of these portfolio companies,” the statement said.
On the departure of the four managing directors, the Sequoia statement said Sumir and KP started WestBridge in 2000 when venture business in India was virtually non-existent and they were joined by SK and Sandeep in 2001. “They put a tremendous amount of effort into getting the original WestBridge business off the ground, and helped to build a team and franchise, which, for the last five years, has operated as Sequoia Capital, and is widely regarded as the leading venture and growth equity firm in India,” it added. The four will continue to represent Sequoia Capital on the boards of a variety of private and public companies and hope to work with the Sequoia Capital team on future investment opportunities in areas overlapping areas.
Sequoia Capital manages funds capitalised at close to $1.4 billion in India and has around $600 million to be invested over the next three years. Sequoia Capital has invested in more than 60 Indian companies, including Comviva (Bharti Telesoft), Café Coffee Day, Dr Lal etc.