Sequoia India Expands Its Leadership Team

It is no secret that the tech ecosystem in India and Southeast Asia is developing rapidly. With it, we are witnessing record investment activity in the region as an unprecedented number of companies get valued in the billions. At Sequoia India, they are always looking for ways to serve founders better, to adapt, and to stay relevant to the needs of founders at every stage of their company-building journey. Over the last few years, they have deepened our engagement with entrepreneurs across stages and we now manage 10 dedicated funds focused on seed, venture, and growth stages.

Today, they announced significant additions to our leadership team at Sequoia India, a move that underscores their commitment to serving founders better across stages and sectors. It also deepens their ability to partner with a growing number of high-potential companies in the region. They are promoting five new Managing Directors to the investment advisory team at Sequoia India: two of them in our venture capital advisory team and three of them in the growth equity advisory team.

They have promoted Ashish Agarwal and Harshjit Sethi as Managing Directors in our venture team. They are also very excited to appoint Ishaan Mittal, Sakshi Chopra, and Tejeshwi Sharma as Managing Directors in our growth investing team. Ashish joined Sequoia as an analyst in February 2013. From the start, Ashish was clear he wanted to be an early-stage investor; his superpower is his ability to imagine what a future market structure could look like and he often nudges the team to take the long-term view. He has advised on investments on behalf of Sequoia India in trailblazing companies like Groww, Pristyn Care, Stanza Living, Progcap, and many others.

Harshjit joined Sequoia India in 2015 when he moved back from Silicon Valley after building products at Dropbox. Since then Harsh has ably represented Sequoia India by advising on investments in disruptive companies like BharatPe, Apna, Darwinbox, Lambda Test and many others. Founders are drawn to Harsh’s product-first and strategic thinking while he himself can’t stop evangelizing the massive global opportunity for Indian companies over the next decade.

Ishaan first joined Sequoia India in 2011 as part of Sequoia’s Analyst Program. After rejoining post his MBA at Harvard, Ishaan has advised on investments in fast growing companies like Razorpay, MamaEarth, Cardekho, Finova Capital and many other category-defining companies. Ishaan is ‘the sharp shooter’ on the growth team characterized by his thoughtful and deliberate approach to investing, as well as the effort and energy he puts in while working with founders.

Sakshi joined Sequoia India in 2010 as part of the Analyst Program. Today she is seen as the ‘go to’ person for all Consumer and Consumer Tech investments at Sequoia India. She’s comfortable taking risks and making bold decisions and works relentlessly with founders to create category-defining companies. Sakshi has advised on investments in terrific Growth stage companies like Indigo Paints, Wakefit, Purplle, Five Star Finance and numerous others.

TJ joined Sequoia India in 2012, also as part of Sequoia’s Analyst Program. TJ completed his MBA from Stanford University and also worked with the Tencent investment team for India before returning to Sequoia India in 2018. He’s known for his ‘dream gene’ – his ability to envision and dream large outcomes with his founders. He has advised on growth-stage investments in Moglix, Whatfix, Rebel Foods, and Unacademy.

Our true north at Sequoia India is to relentlessly focus on helping founders win. These new promotions are yet another step in that direction. Our new Managing Directors bring close to 40 years of collective experience working with over 50 startups in this region, and we think they will make very impactful contributions to the journeys of some of the most important startups in our region.

In addition to the investment teams at Sequoia India, they have worked extremely hard to assemble a world-class bench of company builders to serve their founders better. Across marketing and growth, technology, data science, human capital, strategic development, public policy, finance, and legal functions, they have over 40 functional experts who are focused on company building alongside our founders.