Kalaari Capital has hired a new partner as the venture capital firm looks to beef up its leadership team after a series of top-level exits over the past year.
Sreedhar Prasad has joined Kalaari Capital from consultancy firm KPMG India, The Economic Times reported citing people it did not name.
Prasad’s last-held designation at KPMG was partner and head-consumer markets & internet business, advisory. He occupied various other positions during his 14 years at the firm.
Email queries sent to Kalaari Capital and KPMG did not elicit a response till the time of publishing this report.
At least three senior executives have left Kalaari in the last one year even as the VC firm raises a fourth fund.
Last month, Kalaari partner Sumit Jain left to join Sistema Asia Fund Advisory, a VC fund floated by Russian conglomerate Sistema PJSFC, as a senior partner.
Jain had been with Kalaari for close to a decade.
In August, Mint reported that Kalaari managing director Rajesh Raju may quit but would continue to manage the second and third funds. He is currently still with the VC firm and serves as the general partner of the aforementioned funds.
In October last year, partners Bala Srinivasa and Prashanth Aluru had resigned from the venture capital firm. Srinivasa is now managing director at early-stage VC firm Unitary Helion, an early-stage fund floated by Rahul Chandra, co-founder and managing director of homegrown venture capital firm Helion Venture Partners LLC.
Kalaari Capital has $650 million in assets under management. Some of its investments this year include software-as-a-service platform Hiver, used cars marketplace Truebil, vernacular knowledge-sharing platform Vokal and digital insurance platform Toffee.
High-profile departures
There have been a number of top-level exits at VC firms this year.
Sequoia Capital said in August that Abhay Pandey, a managing director who was with the investment firm for more than 11 years, was leaving.
Pandey's resignation followed that of another high-profile managing director in VT Bharadwaj, who decided to step down in April after 11 years with Sequoia Capital. Last June, Gautam Mago, another managing director at Sequoia Capital, had resigned after 10 years.
Bharadwaj and Mago joined hands in July to float a fund, A91 Partners, to invest in privately-held small and mid-sized companies. Pandey has also joined them.
Kaushik Anand, the India head of CapitalG, recently stepped down from the growth equity fund floated by Google parent Alphabet Inc to join A91. Anand will join A91 Partners early next year.
