Abhishek Nag & Vaibhav Agrawal Quit Lightspeed Venture Partners

In a series of top-level exits at venture capital (VC) firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, Abhishek Nag has stepped down as a partner at its India arm. Meanwhile, another partner at its US fund, Vaibhav Agrawal, has also reportedly bid adieu to the investment firm. 

As per Nag’s LinkedIn profile, he left Lightspeed India last month and joined Mumbai-based 360 One (formerly IIFL Wealth & Asset Management) and will oversee early-stage investments at the new firm. 

Meanwhile, as per a report by the Economic Times, Silicon Valley-based Agrawal left Lightspeed to float his new venture firm. The report said that Agrawal moved to Lightspeed’s US fund three years ago and left the VC firm in 2023.

Lightspeed declined to comment on Inc42’s queries on the matter. 

Interestingly, the reports of the exits come three months after the VC firm in January roped in Vivek Gambhir and Kevin Aluwi as venture partners to scale up its expansion plans in India and Southeast Asia.

Founded in 2008, Lightspeed is a multi-stage VC firm that has backed the likes of Indian juggernauts such as BYJU’S, Udaan, ShareChat, Razorpay and Innovacer. It led Pocket FM’s $103 Mn round in March and a separate $41 Mn round in Bengaluru-based GenAI startup Sarvam AI in December 2023.

While the jury is still out on the two latest investments, the VC firm’s larger bets have not played out well. Big-ticket investments in B2B ecommerce giant Udaan and social media platform ShareChat have not yielded results as both the companies have seen their valuations tank. 

A far cry from its peak $3.2 Bn valuation in early 2021, Udaan was last pegged at $1.8 Bn in December 20203 during its $340 Mn financing round. On similar lines, ShareChat was said to be in talks to raise capital at $1 Bn to $1.5 Bn valuation, miles away from its peak $5 Bn valuation.

Marred by capital drought, both startups have raised debt while undertaking mass layoffs. But the worst bet for the VC firm has been BYJU’S, which recently undertook a rights issue at a 99% valuation cut.

Lightspeed India’s only relief has been its reported partial exit from OYO in 2019 and the sale of ItzCash to Ebix, where it made a 3X-4X return.

The VC firm has so far raised commitments to the tune of around $1.6 Bn across four funds starting in 2015.

The departures of Nag and Agrawal come at a time when a slew of senior VC partners have put in their papers amid worsening funding winter. Earlier this year, Nexus Venture Partners’ Sameer Brij Verma resigned to launch his new fund. Right after that, venture debt firm Trifecta Capital’s partner Sandeep Bapat also quit to join PE firm Singularity Growth as its new co-chief investment officer and senior partner.

There have been a spate of top-level exits at other Indian VC and PE firms, including Lightbox Ventures and Orios Venture Partners, in the past one year.

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