Exclusive: Ahead Of Third Fund, Venture Highway Founder Samir Sood Steps Down From Partner Role 

In yet another leadership change at a prominent venture capital (VC) firm in India, Venture Highway (VH) founder Samir Sood has quietly stepped away as partner, with Priya Mohan being elevated to managing partner.

While Venture Highway confirmed the development this week after Inc42’s queries, the transition started in January 2023. Sood will retain his founder position at Venture Highway.

Sood told Inc42 that he’s stepping away from the day-to-day operations and decision making at Venture Highway to spend more time with his family. “I have been doing this for nearly a decade and I thought this is a good time to let the new generation of partners lead Venture Highway. We have a capable team in place to take this forward,” he added.

The Delhi NCR-based firm, which was founded in 2015 by Sood and former WhatsApp chief business officer Neeraj Arora, counts unicorns such as Meesho, CRED, Moglix among others in its portfolio.

The firm’s official communication to limited partners as well as portfolio company founders began in January 2023, and since then Mohan and Arora have been in the process of raising the third fund for VH.

”In addition to the formal announcement to each LP, the leadership has spent time taking the LPs through the process informally and in person as well,” Mohan added.

Changes Ahead Of Third Venture Highway Fund 

Speaking to Inc42 about Sood’s transition, Mohan said, “The transition was planned and thought through. Samir decided to step back into an advisor role in VH (Venture Highway) to support the next generation to take charge and continue building the VH franchise.”

Mohan, who was formerly a ‘Startup Sensei’ at Venture Highway will formally take on the charge of managing director. She said that the firm is moving away from informal designations.

Besides Arora and Mohan, who are both Managing Partners, the firm recently hired Rahul Garg as Partner, who was formerly a Principal at Kalaari Capital and Iron Pillar.

A chartered accountant and Indian School of Business (ISB) graduate, Mohan joined Venture Highway in 2018, when the firm was raising its second institutional fund.

Venture Highway had closed its $78 Mn second fund in January 2020, months before most of the world went into the pandemic lockdown.

Since then, the VC firm has been a key investor for Fampay (Seed & Series A), Airmeet (Series A), BetterPlace (Series B), Meesho (Series E), Cityfurnish (Series A), Wealthy (Series A), Grip Invest (Series A) among several other startups at the seed and pre-seed stage — Ivy Home, Cheq, Mergai, Ripik and others.

Before founding Venture Highway, Sood was the head of corporate development at Google for South Asia & Oceania after his stints at Dell, Microsoft, and Cisco. Arora and Sood were colleagues at Google.

Partners Look For Greener Pastures

The change in leadership comes at a time when several prominent VC firms have seen exits at the top. As Inc42 reported earlier this week, partners and fund managers at VC firms such as Orios Venture Partners, Lightbox, Rebright Partners, Together Fund have stepped down to pursue new opportunities.

In most cases, these experienced fund managers are expected to launch new funds, but some are even launching new startups to capitalise on new market opportunities.

There have also been questions from LPs in relation to fund performance as well as lapses in terms of due diligence and lack of corporate governance at portfolio companies. This has led to many leadership rejigs and partners looking at fresh funds and a new investment thesis.

In this case, Sood said he would be closely advising a few portfolio companies at VH, besides supporting the firm in the thesis and vision development. The founding partner would be relinquishing board seats at portfolio companies, but at the moment, it’s not clear if Mohan or Arora would be replacing him as director on these boards.

However, Mohan added the Venture Highway would not see any change in terms of the investment thesis under the new management and that the firm has recorded the first close of its third fund.

Venture Highway declined to comment on the corpus of the third fund, for which the firm is exclusively raising from foreign LPs, given its cross-border investment focus.

We were told that VH has completed the first close of its third fund and continues to actively invest from this corpus. “We will remain a zero-to-one seed fund investing in category-creating tech companies building in India/US for India and the globe,” the managing partner added.

In 2023, Venture Highway has invested in the seed rounds for Kidovo, Kintsugi and Weekday, all three of which are headquartered in the US, but Mohan declined to comment on the fund’s exits in the past two years.