It seems the rough patch for Helion Venture Partners is not going to end any soon as another management- level executive exits the firm while the fourth fund remains stalled.
Chief financial officer R Natarajan, who was overseeing Helion’s Bangalore operations, has recently exited owing to delays in raising capital for a new fund, sources said. They also said that Helion is en route to shutting down its Bangalore operations and continue managing its existing investments from its Gurgaon office.
Natarajan will be succeeded by Sanjay Chaturvedi, previously CFO at Cello Writing and earlier at Moody’s group company Amba Research, in Gurgaon.
Natarajan has just joined the exit bandwagon as there has been a slurry of resignations in the company earlier. Owing to differences in the founding partners over the firm’s strategy and profit strategy, Rahul Chowdhri, Ritesh Banglani and Alok Goyal, who formed the second line of management at Helion, has already exited.
Kanwaljeet Singh, a founding MD, had left the firm in 2014 also because of differences on investment strategy.
Eventually, the investors wanted the firm to rebuild its management team before any more fundraising. The firm has halted its capital seeking for its proposed $300-million in the fourth fund. It has seen three senior executives resign in December itself.
The sources said, “Fund 4 is unlikely to happen because Helion no longer has a large enough team to carry things through.”
The homegrown venture capital firm, which has raised about $600 million (Rs 4,000 crore) across three funds, has invested in several marquee startups including bus-ticketing venture RedBus, online marketplace ShopClues and Nasdaq-listed online travel agency MakeMyTrip.
The remaining founding managing directors— Gurgaon-based Sanjeev Aggarwal and Rahul Chandra, and US-based Ashish Gupta — are in favour of managing Helion’s existing investments from Gurgaon, according to the sources.
