Steadview Capital appoints Maneesh Menon as India director, plans domestic fund: Sources

London-headquartered hedge fund Steadview Capital Management has appointed Maneesh Menon as its India director following the departure of Puneet Kumar last year, said people with knowledge of the development.

Menon will join Steadview Capital Management from Fidelity-backed Eight Roads Ventures, which he left earlier this year. He was a principal at Eight Roads and led investments across software, enterprise, consumer and fintech spaces at the firm. Kumar left Steadview Capital Management in October 2025 and subsequently joined Mirae Asset Venture as India CEO.

“Steadview Capital has been bulking up its local investment team given its plans to launch an India-dedicated investment vehicle. It is looking to build a corpus of around $250-300 million,” said one of the persons, who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that the firm would focus on investments across consumer, artificial intelligence (AI) and deeptech companies in their growth stage.


ET was the first to report on the development in its online edition on Tuesday.

Responding to a query emailed by ET, Steadview Capital Management confirmed the appointment. “Maneesh will be joining as a senior member in the investments team. In addition to Maneesh, Himanshu Jain has recently joined us as principal from Vertex Ventures,” the firm said.

Jain joined the fund in January from early-stage investment firm Vertex Ventures.

Steadview Capital has backed companies such as Zomato, Delhivery, Lenskart, Nykaa and Innovaccer. It recently also participated in the $54-million seed round for Deepinder Goyal’s health-focused wearable startup Temple.

“Maneesh primarily focused on early stage investments at Eight Roads and this is an opportunity for him to work with later stage and potentially even public companies,” said another person, adding that Menon has worked with Eight Roads portfolio companies such as AssetPlus, Wint Wealth and SaaS Labs.

Menon, who joined Eight Roads in 2020 from consulting firm Bain & Company, did not respond to ET’s queries till press time. Eight Roads did not respond either.

The firm, which has backed startups such as Shadowfax, MoEngage, Whatfix, and Exponent Energy, recently consolidated its Asia investment teams that have seen several senior level departures. Another Eight Roads principal, Kavish Kothari, joined Elev8 Venture Partners as partner in January.

Menon’s move to Steadview Capital Management adds to the churn in the venture capital segment. Kumar’s move to Mirae Asset Venture had come against the backdrop of the South Korean firm’s previous India CEO, Ashish Dave, stepping down. During Kumar’s tenure, Steadview had invested in more than 30 private companies, including Eternal (then Zomato), Nykaa, Freshworks, Innovaccer, Chargebee, Ultrahuman, Atomberg and MoEngage, and had seen nine portfolio companies go public.

Over the past 12-15 months, multiple senior investment executives and partners have exited their firms, including Peak XV Partners’ Shailesh Lakhani, Abheek Anand and Harshjit Sethi, as well as B Capital’s Kabir Narang, Z47 managing director Pranay Desai and General Catalyst’s Priya Mohan. Lakhani and Sethi have teamed up with another former Peak XV colleague Mayank Porwal to launch a $250-million early-stage investment firm, Ambition Capital, ET reported on Monday.

Further, Cisco Investments senior director Pankaj Mitra has joined Bessemer Venture Partners as a partner focussing on AI, enterprise technology and cybersecurity investments in India, and Unilever executive vice president for corporate development, Vikram Kumaraswamy, joined L Catterton as partner and co-head of India, last August.