Helion Venture Partners sees more exits; Rahul Chowdhri, Ritesh Banglani and Alok Goyal leave

BENGALURU: Helion Venture Partners, one of the country’s oldest venture capital firms, said three of its partners are leaving the firm to pursue other opportunities.
Rahul Chowdhri, Ritesh Banglani and Alok Goyal are leaving nine months after Cofounder and Senior Managing Director Kanwaljit Singh quit to pursue his interests in the consumer space. It was with Singh’s departure that the venture firm announced the elevation of two directors, Banglani and Chowdhri, as partners at the venture fund.

"The split is primarily due to difference in investment styles," a top executive in the firm said on the condition of anonymity.

Helion is traditionally known to be more of a conservative fund and, according to the executive, it is speculated that Chowdhri, Banglani and Goyal wanted to take bolder bets, especially technology-focussed, which was not in sync with the thinking at the top.

Over the last two weeks, Sanjeev Aggarwal, Ashish Gupta and Rahul Chandra have replaced the departing executives on the boards of its portfolio companies.


"The departing executives will separate from the firm over the next few weeks and will cease to provide any ongoing assistance to the portfolio companies," Helion said in a statement. "Founders of the VC fund, Sanjeev Aggarwal, Ashish Gupta and Rahul Chandra, will continue to spearhead Helion’s investments across the technology landscape as well as engage and mentor portfolio companies."

In April, ET reported that Helion was looking to raise around $300 million (Rs 1,986 crore) for the new fund, slightly higher than its previous fund of $255 million raised in March 2012. The initiative was being headed by Goyal at the time. To an emailed query from ET, Helion cofounder and senior MD Ashish Gupta, however, said "all fundraising efforts have always been and will continue to be spearheaded by the founders — Sanjeev Aggarwal, Ashish Gupta and Rahul Chandra."

This separation is a reminder of an earlier instance in 2011, when four managing directors of Sequoia Capital India – Sumir Chadha, KP Balaraj, Sandeep Singhal and SK Jain — decided to move out of the global venture capital firm and return to their original fund, Westbridge Capital Partners.