The Indian startup ecosystem is mourning the loss of Akhilesh Agarwal, a widely respected investor who passed away yesterday.

Agarwal was part of Accel’s investment team, where he focused on backing pre-seed and seed stage startups. Over the years, he became known for working closely with founders and supporting them in the early stages of their entrepreneurial journeys.

After completing his engineering in electronics from Bengaluru, Agarwal started his career as a business development associate. After working with organisations like Goldman Sachs and fintech startup Klub, Agarwal entered the startup investment ecosystem in 2021.

He began his stint in the VC ecosystem by joining pi Ventures as assistant vice president, where he helmed the firm’s investments in several early stage ventures like Ottonomy. Agarwal later joined Blume Ventures and led investments in early stage deeptech startups like iDO Devices, Mave Health, and Optimized ElectroTech.

He was also an active angel investor, backing startups like GalaxEye, Ethereal Exploration Guild, Sarla Aviation, Serendipity Space, Leumas, BioCompute, Mave, among others. 

Agarwal joined Accel in October 2025, where he helped the venture capital firm invest in spacetech startup QOSMIC. 

Post Agarwal’s demise, several founders, investors, former colleagues, among others, penned down heartfelt tributes expressing their grief.

South Asia-focused venture capital programme, The VC Fellowship, issued a statement on its LinkedIn handle regarding Agarwal’s demise. 

“Over the years, Akhilesh supported the VC Fellowship with remarkable generosity. He never treated mentorship as a checkbox. He listened, challenged, encouraged, and believed in people long before they believed in themselves. His commitment to nurturing founders and strengthening India’s deeptech ecosystem was evident in everything he did,” the statement added. 

Ottonomy cofounder Ritukar Vijay said Agarwal was the first person to believe in the startup in 2020. He added that Agarwal scouted the robotics startup at pi Ventures leading to its seed round. 

“That kind of early conviction from an investor means everything to a founder. It gives you fuel when nothing else does. What made him truly special was that he never stopped showing up. He moved from pi to Blume to Accel – and through every chapter of his own journey, he still checked in on us. Not because he had to. Because that’s just who he was,” Vijay said.

Cohort-based learning startup Metvy founder Shawrya Mehrotra called Agarwal a friend and mentor.

Agarwal’s passing marks the fourth such loss for the Indian startup ecosystem this year, after the passing away of Unnati Agri cofounder Ashok Prasad, SaaS startup Xpedize cofounder Regan Mithani, and Icertis cofounder Samir Bodas. 

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