Together unveils new fund worth $150 million, to back opportunities in Gen AI space

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Together Fund, led by Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham and Eka Software founder Manav Garg, has announced its second fund worth $150 million to continue backing opportunities in the Indian software-as-a-service (SaaS) and artificial intelligence (AI) space. The total corpus for Together’s Fund II is almost double that of the previous one, as it looks to make larger follow-on investments and back local disruptors in the generative AI space. It has also marked a first close of the second fund, raising the corpus from endowments and sovereign funds across the US and Asia.

Garg, Together’s founding partner, declined to comment on the total corpus raised as a part of the first close. The founder-led venture investor looks to back SaaS startups across themes of cybersecurity, devtools and healthcare, apart from AI, with the new fund.Launched in 2021 with a corpus of $85 million, Together was founded with the aim of backing the next set of product SaaS startups building for global geographies. Almost 33% of the total corpus of the first fund was raised from institutional investors, with the rest coming from startup entrepreneurs and operators.

However, unlike its debut fund, almost 95% of the corpus will now be raised from institutional capital, Garg added. The venture backer plans to start deploying the capital from Fund II starting the first quarter of calendar year 2024. It looks to make a final close for the latest fund in the next nine months.