Sequoia Alumni Launch Ambition Capital With $250M Target to Back India Early-Stage Tech
TL;DR
Shailesh Lakhani and Harshjit Sethi — former managing directors at Peak XV Partners (the entity previously known as Sequoia Capital India) — are launching Ambition Capital, a new early-stage venture firm targeting a $250 million fund. They are joined by Mayank Porwal, who departed Peak XV in 2023. The Bengaluru-based firm plans to invest at seed and Series A across artificial intelligence, fintech, deeptech and consumer technology, with a focus on themes including India-specific digital infrastructure, AI-native software and digital sovereignty. The fund is in early discussions with global limited partners and represents one of the more consequential GP spinout stories in the Indian VC ecosystem in several years.
Key Takeaways
This is the most significant Indian VC spinout of 2026. Lakhani spent more than 17 years at Sequoia India and Peak XV, backing companies including Minimalist (skincare), Ixigo (travel) and Zetwerk (manufacturing marketplace). Sethi led AI-focused investments at Peak XV and is one of the few Indian VCs with genuine early-stage AI investment track records. When two managing directors with this depth of institutional experience leave a top-tier firm together, it is not a routine career move — it is a bet that the optimal structure for investing in India's next generation of companies is a focused, GP-owned fund rather than a large institutional franchise.
The timing reflects structural changes at Peak XV, not a market retreat. Peak XV just closed a $1.3 billion fund and is operating at scale — its investment pace, minimum check size and portfolio management complexity are all tuned for larger, later-stage deals. Lakhani and Sethi's departure follows a broader pattern of senior investors at franchise VC firms recognizing that seed-stage investing requires a different incentive structure, portfolio concentration and GP bandwidth than what mega-fund economics can sustain. Ambition Capital is a direct response to that structural reality.
The $250 million target is deliberately early-stage scale, not growth scale. At $250 million with a target of 26-30 investments, Ambition is aiming for meaningful initial ownership (likely $4-8 million average check at seed/Series A) with capital reserved for follow-on. This is a fund size that enables the GPs to remain hands-on, invest with conviction and maintain enough reserves to lead A rounds or support companies through their first 24 months of scaling. It is the right fund size for the strategy they are describing.
Global LPs are paying close attention to India's VC ecosystem right now. McKinsey data cited this week shows that Indian funds are the top destination for over 50% of global LPs, driven by China's slowdown and India's strong macro fundamentals. Ambition Capital is entering the LP fundraising market at exactly the moment when global institutional capital is most actively re-evaluating India allocation. The Lakhani-Sethi brand name will command serious attention in LP meetings in New York, Singapore and the Gulf.
Why This Fund Matters
India's venture capital market in 2026 is at an inflection point. On one side, the large incumbent firms — Peak XV, Sequoia-heritage funds, Accel India, Elevation — have all raised large multi-stage funds and are deploying at scale. On the other side, India's startup ecosystem is producing a new generation of AI-native, deeptech and fintech founders who need seed-stage conviction capital from investors who understand Indian market dynamics at a granular level. The gap between what large funds can offer at seed and what early-stage founders actually need is widening, and that gap is exactly where Ambition Capital is positioning itself.
Shailesh Lakhani's track record is the right track record for this moment. Zetwerk, one of his best-known bets, is a B2B manufacturing marketplace that is fundamentally an India-specific infrastructure play — the kind of company that requires deep local market understanding to evaluate correctly and long-term conviction to hold through the early volatility. Minimalist represents the consumer side: an Indian direct-to-consumer brand that competed on product quality and transparency in a market dominated by imported brand mythology. These are not obvious pattern-match bets from a playbook developed in Silicon Valley. They are India-specific theses that required genuine on-the-ground judgment.
Harshjit Sethi's AI-focused work at Peak XV adds a dimension that Ambition will need to compete in India's current funding environment, where every institutional LP and global crossover fund is evaluating AI-native Indian companies. Sethi's ability to evaluate technical differentiation in AI-first startups — and his relationships within the Indian AI research and engineering community — will be a key source of deal flow and diligence quality for the new fund.
The digital sovereignty theme is worth taking seriously, not as political positioning but as an investment thesis. India is actively building domestic digital infrastructure — UPI, ONDC, Account Aggregator, DigiYatra — that creates platform risk for global tech incumbents and opportunity for Indian-first builders. Founders building on top of or alongside this infrastructure stack have structural advantages in the Indian market that their Western counterparts cannot easily replicate. A fund that deeply understands this stack and has the government relationships to track its evolution will identify category-defining companies before global funds even realize the category exists.
The Team
Shailesh Lakhani spent over 17 years at Sequoia India and Peak XV Partners, where he made landmark investments in Minimalist, Ixigo and Zetwerk, among others. He has a reputation as one of the most rigorous and patient investors in the Indian ecosystem, willing to back founders in categories that require multiple years of market-building before scale becomes visible. Harshjit Sethi led AI-focused investments at Peak XV, positioning himself as one of the few early-stage investors in India with genuine technical depth in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Mayank Porwal, who left Peak XV in 2023, completes the founding team, bringing his own investment and ecosystem relationships to the partnership.
What This Means for Founders
For Indian founders building at seed or Series A in AI, fintech, deeptech or consumer technology, Ambition Capital will be among the most relevant new sources of institutional capital to watch in 2026 and 2027. The founding team's combined network across Peak XV's current portfolio, India's engineering and research communities and global LP relationships means the fund will have access to deal flow and reference networks that very few new GPs can credibly claim. Founders who want a seed or Series A investor with genuine institutional depth — not just an emerging manager writing small cheques — should be tracking this closely.
The fund's focus on Indian-specific innovation themes also means it is not simply applying a Silicon Valley investment model to Indian startups. For founders building in markets like India-first enterprise SaaS, indigenous fintech infrastructure, vernacular AI or manufacturing technology, Ambition Capital's thesis is likely to resonate more deeply than that of global generalist funds who evaluate Indian companies through a Western market lens.
Fund Momentum Take
Ambition Capital is one of the more important emerging manager stories in global VC right now. The founding team has the pedigree, network and institutional credibility to raise a $250 million fund without difficulty — the real question is how they will differentiate their investment approach from the large funds they are spinning out of, and whether they can maintain the discipline to stay at the early stage rather than drifting toward Series B and C as the fund deploys.
The spinout dynamic from Peak XV is worth contextualizing carefully. The press has noted a contentious internal split at the firm over profit sharing and power structures. Without taking sides on that dispute, the outcome — senior talent leaving to build focused independent vehicles — is structurally healthy for the Indian VC ecosystem. Competition among GPs improves terms for founders, improves LP return expectations and forces all funds to be more intentional about their value-add. Ambition Capital entering the market is net positive for Indian founders regardless of how the underlying GP dynamics played out.
The key risk for this fund is concentration in a single geographic market at a moment of genuine geopolitical uncertainty. India's growth trajectory is strong, but its venture market has historically been more sensitive to global risk-off sentiment than the US or China ecosystems. Funds that are exclusively India-focused can see LP appetite evaporate quickly in a global downturn. Ambition Capital will need to demonstrate early portfolio wins and DPI to build the kind of LP loyalty that sustains a fund franchise through multiple market cycles.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who are the founders of Ambition Capital?
Ambition Capital is founded by Shailesh Lakhani and Harshjit Sethi, both former managing directors at Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India), along with Mayank Porwal who previously departed Peak XV in 2023. The firm is headquartered in Bengaluru, India.
What is Ambition Capital's investment focus?
The fund targets seed and Series A investments in India-based companies across artificial intelligence, fintech, deeptech and consumer technology, with a particular emphasis on India-specific innovation themes and digital sovereignty — companies building on or alongside India's domestic digital infrastructure stack.
What is the target fund size for Ambition Capital?
Ambition Capital is targeting $250 million for its first fund, with plans to make approximately 26-30 investments. The fund is currently in early discussions with potential limited partners as of March 2026.
Why did Shailesh Lakhani and Harshjit Sethi leave Peak XV?
The specific personal reasons have not been publicly disclosed. Reports have referenced internal tensions at Peak XV around profit sharing and organizational structure. Structurally, the most compelling reason is that seed-stage investing in India benefits from a more focused, GP-owned fund structure rather than a large institutional franchise with multi-stage deployment pressures.
How does Ambition Capital differ from Peak XV Partners?
Peak XV Partners is now a $1.3 billion multi-stage fund investing across seed through growth equity in India and Southeast Asia. Ambition Capital is positioning exclusively at seed and Series A in India with a smaller, more concentrated fund and a tighter GP team. The smaller size enables higher ownership targets per company and more hands-on GP engagement per portfolio company.
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