Peak XV nets Rs 1,200 Cr gain from Porter exit, marks 11X return

Peak XV Partners has secured a windfall of over Rs 1,200 crore ($140 million) by fully exiting its investment in logistics startup Porter during the company’s latest funding round, Mint reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The exit marks an over 11-fold return on the Rs 116 crore the firm had invested across multiple rounds over the past decade.

“The company has scaled significantly since our Series A investment in 2015, and is now valued at over a billion dollars. After nearly ten years of partnership, we have exited our stake and are deeply grateful to the founding team—Uttam Digga, Pranav Goel, and Vikas Choudhary—for their exceptional collaboration,” a Peak XV spokesperson said.

The fund has sold partial or full stakes in several companies, including Rebel Foods, Healthkart, Finova, K12 Techno, and Cloudnine Hospitals. The firm has also pared holdings in companies heading for IPOs or already public, such as ixigo, Awfis, Go Digit General Insurance, Blackbuck, Zomato, Mamaearth, Truecaller, Indigo Paints, Five Star Business Finance, and MobiKwik.

Over the past five years, Peak XV has generated about $3.6 billion in cash exits, with more than 30 of its portfolio companies going public. In 2024 alone, the firm recorded exits worth $1.5 billion—exceeding its capital deployment in the same period, according to Mint.

Porter’s latest round, led by Kedaara Capital and Wellington Management, valued the company at $1.2 billion. The transaction included both primary and secondary components, with other early investors such as Kae Capital also exiting.

The mega-fund equation

Yet, even such a strong outcome underscores the math problem facing large venture funds in India.

“Porter is a unicorn, and this was a fantastic exit by any measure,” said a Mumbai-based venture investor who closely tracks fund performance. “But when you’re managing a $700 million fund like Peak, even a $140 million return only accounts for 20% of the total corpus. That’s the problem with mega-fund math in India, you need several such unicorn-scale exits just to return the fund.”

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“The startup ecosystem has definitely matured, but we still don’t see enough $200-300 million exits to support billion-dollar fund sizes consistently,” the investor added. “For funds raised in 2014 or 2015, many are still waiting on meaningful liquidity. That puts pressure on DPI and IRR, especially as LPs expect timely distributions.”

“Unicorns alone don’t move the needle anymore,” the investor said. “If funds want to keep raising at scale, either the exit market has to deepen fast, or fund sizes need to be recalibrated to match reality.”

Meanwhile, Peak XV is in early discussions to raise up to $1.4 billion for its first dedicated India-Southeast Asia fund post its split from Sequoia Capital. The firm expects at least two dozen of its portfolio companies to hit the public markets within the next 12-18 months.