Together Fund Looking To Mark Final Close Of Its $150 Mn Fund II By June

SaaS and AI-focussed venture capital firm Together Fund is aiming to mark the final close of its $150 Mn Fund II by June.

The VC firm has made 31 investments across its two funds through the second fund, Together Fund’s cofounder and managing director Manav Garg told Inc42.

As per ET’s report, the firm is also looking to back a new batch of 19-20 startups in the AI segment from the second fund.

Founded by Freshworks founder Mathrubootham, Eka Software founder Manav Garg, former Matrix Partners’ Shubham Gupta, and former Accel executive Avinash Raghava, Together Fund is focussed on early-stage startups in SaaS and AI sectors. It announced an initial corpus of $85 Mn for SaaS startups.

Till date, the investment firm has backed startups such as Jhana, RapidClaims, WorkHack, Zipstack, UiFlow, among others.

Raghava left Together Fund to take up the role of CEO at SaaS collective SaaSBOOMi, in 2023. Meanwhile, the early stage investor firm appointed former Google vice president of product strategy Lakshmi Shankar as its general partner in August last year.

The firm’s Fund II marked its first close in July 2023, having attracted interest from institutional investors in the US and Asia.

Garg also said that the ticket size of investments via the second fund is between $500K and $10 Mn, with its average ranging about $4-5 Mn in seed and Series A rounds of startups.

Further, he mentioned that the firm has launched its AI Studio today, which is a venture-building programme designed to back innovative AI platforms with flexible equity funding of up to $1 Mn, along with the provision of a dedicated workspace in Bengaluru for the duration of the programme.

This development notably comes at a time when early stage startups across sectors have started gaining traction from investors.

Seed stage startups raised $893 Mn across 433 deals during 2024, registering an increase of 31% from the $681 Mn raised in the preceding year. The surge in seed-stage funding can be attributed to increased investor interest in startups and the growing support ecosystem for early stage ventures, bolstered by initiatives like Startup India and DPIIT’s policies fostering innovation.

Meanwhile, earlier today (March 3), A Junior VC (AJVC), a venture capital fund launched by former Venture Highway executive Aviral Bhatnagar, closed its first INR 100 Cr fund targeting pre-seed investments in India.