Four prominent Indian entrepreneurs are now ready to participate in the country's next stage of the startup ecosystem. They were among those who launched India's SaaS journey by helping startups grow and win global customers.The group 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 said on Wednesday it has created a venture capital fund, called Together Fund, with an initial corpus of $85 million to back young Indian startups operating in the software-as-a-service space.Together Fund will be supporting 20-25 startups in the Pre-seed and Series B stages. Garg stated that the check size of the firms will be between $250,000 and $3 million in an interview with TechCrunch.Indian news outlet CapTable reported on the fund formation earlier in the year. It cited an investor who stated that Together was likely to attract all the best SaaS deals due to its founder team and problem statement.The fund has attracted over 150 investors and startup founders to its network, including Nishith Rastogi from Locus, Krish Subramanian, of Chargebee, Shashank ND, of Practo and Kunal Shah, of CRED. Garg said that this is why Together Fund was created. He said that the entire team is made up of founders and operators who have worked in startups and are experts in global expansion and sales strategy.He said that this fund is India's first founder-led operator. This fund was created to offer great opportunities and help to founders, as well as money.The fund, which includes its founding team as LPs, was created at a moment when Indian startups are raising record capital. This is despite the fact that many prominent investors have doubled down on the second-largest internet market in the world.India's startup ecosystem has changed from one that many Indian families were afraid of to one that has seen several notable exits. Many entrepreneurs have moved on to their second startup.Freshworks has grown to be a global company, with over 3,800 employees and offices around the globe. We were just six people operating in a garage in Chennai, almost 11 years ago. Mathrubootham wrote in a blog post that even though I didn't have a prestigious resume or wealth from my family, it did not stop me dreaming big.Together is more than a fund to me. It is a way for me to give back to the startup community that has given me so much. This fund is a natural evolution of the pay-it-forward initiatives that we started with community programs like SaaSx, PNGrowth and SaaSBOOMi. He said that Together is more than just providing capital for founders. We also offer our time and counsel.Raghava, a member of the founding team at Together Fund, stated in an interview that they will continue to take part in industry initiatives such as SaaSBOOMi, an annual conference that focuses on SaaS startups from India.According to recent studies by SaaSBoomi and McKinsey, India's SaaS industry could be worth $1 trillion and create approximately half a million jobs by 2030.
