It’s no news to anyone that India’s startup culture is flourishing right now. Not only have matured companies started delving into the public markets (the biggest example being Zomato), but new companies are aging gracefully, with 17 startups entering the unicorn club since the start of the year. Thus, in a time of such rapid growth and opportunity, 4 high profile Indian investors are coming together to launch Together fund, with an initial corpus of $85Mn, to invest in early stage startups.
The 4 investors are- Girish Mathrubootham of Freshworks, Manav Garg of Eka Corporation, Shubham Gupta, formerly with investment firm Matrix, and Avinash Raghava, formerly with Nasscom, iSPIRT and SaaSBOOMi. All of them have been at the center of India’s startup culture, and some of the biggest names in the country’s SaaS market.
Now, they are banding together to invest in 20 to 25 startups, funding Pre seed to Series B rounds. The check size will range between $250,000 to $3 million.
The venture capital firm will mostly invest in Software as a Service startups-a market that has grown tremendously in the past few years thanks to India’s tech revolution. However, there are exceptions to this rule.
The fund, which has been deemed to be ‘For Founders, By Founders, and With Founders‘, will be more than just a source of capital for budding startups. Instead, it will become sort of a parent to a sprawling network of startups, providing mentorship to new founders. Together fund is “is a way to pay it forward to the startup community that gave me so much,” according to Mathrubootham.
“We are taking the entire ecosystem together, be it the founders who want to invest through time and money, be it the VCs who want to participate and take our help in whatever they want to get. As it’s said, it takes a village to create a company,” says Manav Garg.
To date, the fund has amassed a network of 150 companies and founders with some of India’s largest startups connected to this new organization.
