India’s largest venture-capital (VC) firm is having its best year. And also, its worst.

Peak XV, formerly known as Sequoia India, is set to silence the sceptics of its exit record finally. The VC, which has deployed over $9 billion in Indian startups over two decades, is now staring down a potential $2 billion payday from the upcoming public listings of companies, including fintechs Groww and Pine Labs, and e-marketplace Meesho.

For years, Peak XV (and its Sequoia-era self) delivered respectable headlines but middling distributions. India’s venture world, for all the noise, has typically returned just 1–1.5X the capital raised. So this upcoming harvest of IPOs in addition to the $1.5 billion cash exitsThe Economic TimesWe've generated USD3.6 billion in cash exits in 5 years since 2024 could redeem the partners at Peak XV as investing savants, inching one step closer to the elite league of their former Menlo Park colleagues.

And yet, just as the champagne is getting iced, people are slipping out the back door.

In early 2025, two of Peak XV’s most senior general partners—Shailesh Lakhani and Abheek Anand—quit. And post-rebrand, especially since 2024, nearly 20 people have walked out—from investors to the heads of marketing, strategic development, and public policy. And most recently, in July, a senior operations executive left.

At the blue-chip VC firm, such departures are rare and telling. For most of Sequoia’s existence, with a 140-member team, few people left. Lakhani and Anand had been with the company for 17 and 12 years, respectively. “Losing seasoned investors like Lakhani and Anand means losing 12-plus years of founder relationships,” said a person close to Peak XV. “In the VC business, relationships are everything. That is what wins deals.”

But Peak XV seems less interested in tenure than in tempo. As it moves from being an India-focused VC to a would-be international powerhouse, it’s choosing who gets to come along for the ride. “Shailendra (Singh, the firm’s MD-partner and de facto CEO) wants to build India’s first global fund,” said a founder backed by the firm.

Which, loosely translated, means: it’s performance season.

In theory, one could just rank partners by exit numbers and call it a day. But exits don’t follow theory. They follow timing, luck, valuation bubbles, and sometimes, actual returns.