The venture capital firm has also launched a separate India focused seed fund to deepen its focus on early-stage bets.
Sequoia India’s Managing Director Amit Jain has stepped down from his position to launch his own startup, the venture firm confirmed in a series of tweets on Wednesday.
The firm further said that going forward Jain will be an entrepreneur-in-residence, working on his venture. Besides, he will have all the access to Sequoia’s partners, operators and networks, before leaving the firm.
“Amit joined us from Uber in 2019 and brought a world-class operator’s perspective to our investing teams. He has been an amazing contributor to so many startups, having led or co-led growth rounds and served on the board of scaled companies,” Sequoia India said.
Jain who is an IIT Delhi and Stanford alumni, was the head of Asia Pacific at Uber before joining Sequoia.
He was also the president of Rent.com, a Los Angeles-based housing classified site, and worked at TPG Capital and McKinsey & Company, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Jain’s resignation comes amid Sequoia India’s plan to build a $2.8 B fund for its India and Southeast Asia startup investments expansion, a Moneycontrol report said.
Jain was part of Sequoia’s high-profile appointment from a global technology giant in 2019. In the same year Sequoia appointed Google Southeast Asia and India vice-president Rajan Anandan as managing director to focus on its newly launched accelerator programme Surge.
Sequoia Capital has also been the most active investor in India. It has invested in more than 130 startups in India including unicorns such as Ola, MuSigma and Zomato. In India, the firm has also intensified its focus on early-stage bets when it launched the Surge programme in January 2019.
The firm retained its most active VC investor title in 2021, was also involved in some of the most profitable exits last year. It struck a profitable partial exit in payment solutions provider Pine Labs where it bagged around $230 million in secondary sale and took a $200 million cash exit when it sold its entire stake in Vini Cosmetics- maker of Fogg deodorant, to PE giant KKR & Co.
Sequoia Capital India also has the highest number of companies in its portfolio that have the potential to turn into a unicorn as early as 2023 or in the next four years, according to a Hurun India Future Unicorn List 2021.
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