Home-grown venture capital fund Helion Venture Partners said on Wednesday three of its partners have quit to pursue opportunities outside the firm.
The three partners -- Rahul Chowdhri, Ritesh Banglani and Alok Goyal -- focused on more than a dozen firms under Helion's portfolio including Housing.com, Lifecell, Dentys, TrulyMadly, Whatfix, BigBasket, Shopclues and Toppr.
They were responsible for deal sourcing, diligence and portfolio support. Goyal was also looking at the firm's fourth fund that is raising around $300-400 million.
The trio will separate from the firm over the next few weeks and will cease to provide any assistance to the portfolio companies, Helion said in a statement.
Calls to Chowdhri and Banglani went unanswered. Goyal said the trio is likely to talk on their plans early next year.
The firm said co-founders Sanjeev Aggarwal, Ashish Gupta and Rahul Chandra will continue to focus on Helion’s investments and mentor portfolio companies.
The firm’s portfolio service team comprises operating partners R Natarajan, Dhruv Prakash and Srikanth Sunderarajan. Natarajan is also the firm’s managing director while Prakash and Sunderarajan support the investee companies in the areas of finance, human resources and technology.
Helion was founded in 2006 and invests in companies at early- to mid-stage level. It has $605 million under management.
The VC firm has backed about 60 firms to date in technology and technology-powered businesses such as e-commerce, online services, mobility, enterprise software and outsourcing. The firm boasts a portfolio that includes Shopclues, BigBasket, Ezetap, Azure Power, Makemytrip, redBus and Taxiforsure.
The exit at Helion is similar to what happened at Sequoia Capital India in 2011 when founding partners KP Balaraj, Sumir Chadha, Sandeep Singhal and SK Jain left to launch PIPE-focused fund WestBridge Capital.
Last year, Helion's senior managing director and co-founder Kanwaljit Singh had also quit to launch seed investment firm Fireside Ventures. In November, he re-joined as independent director on the boards of the VC firm’s investee companies where he used to represent the firm.
Also last year, home-grown fund ChrysCapital's managing director Gulpreet Kohli quit to launch Mylen Investment. The firm has raised $100 million.
