Together Fund - India’s first operator-led VC

Good morning,

Meet the Together Fund, India’s first ‘operator-led’ VC, whose slogan is, ‘For Founders, By Founders, and With Founders’. 

The fund will mostly invest in homegrown startups in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) space and a few that provide new-age software services in consumer-facing sectors such as edtech and fintech.

The choice of sectors isn’t a surprise considering its founding partners — Girish Mathrubootham, Co-founder of Freshworks, Manav Garg, Founder of Eka Software, Shubham Gupta, who was leading SaaS deals at venture capital firm Matrix Partners India until last year, and Avinash Raghava, Founding Volunteer at SaaSBOOMi and Co-founder of iSPIRT.

In a conversation with Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory, the partners shed light on the ambitions of Together Fund. 

The main currency of investment, they explain, will be time and mentorship for budding founders, and not merely money in startups, and the partners in the fund will span the entire startup ecosystem. 

The Together Fund is targeting a corpus of $85 million and will write checks ranging between $250,000 and $3 million per investment. 

“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. Read more.

Editor’s Pick: 100X Entrepreneur 

The journey of entrepreneurship is a difficult one; starting from scratch to building up one’s brand is not a cakewalk. Founders require help, support, advice, guidance, and funds from their families and peers. 

Shantanu Deshpande, Founder of Bombay Shaving Company, was lucky in this case. As he left behind his job at McKinsey to start up, 25 of his colleagues, bosses, and mentors invested in his idea in his initial journey. Read more.

Startup Spotlight

This EV rental startup thriving to reduce air pollution

Even as Indians are realising the need to opt for electric vehicles to reduce vehicular emissions and save fuel, one of the major roadblocks in this shift is the high prices of EVs.

Fortunately, renting vehicles is one of the solutions to this problem. Delhi-based VA-YU is trying to encourage the rental of electric two-wheelers to ensure a greener switch. Read more.

News & Updates

• Kalaari Capital launched CXXO, an initiative that promotes and supports female founder-CEO-led startups in India by providing them unbiased access to capital, mentorship, and a community of other women founders and entrepreneurs.
• Ola has announced the expansion of its employee stock options (ESOP) pool to Rs 3,000 crore. The company stated it is also allocating an additional Rs 400 crore worth of stocks to its employees in the run-up to its IPO.
• Professional education firm Imarticus Learning has acquired Delhi-based social learning platform Eckovation for an undisclosed sum. Imarticus Learning aims to enhance offerings in the space of AI, ML, cybersecurity, supply chain management, software engineering, etc.
• As many as 52,391 entities were recognised as startups by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) as of July 14, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.
• Dutch data centre developer Yondr Group has formed a joint venture with private equity firm Everstone Group and will invest over $1 billion (about Rs 7,443 crore) to develop and operate data centres across India.

Before you go, stay inspired with… 

“Our success is in finding the next 30 Olympic champions in startups.”

— Girish Mathrubootham, Co-founder of Freshworks

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