Together Fund: The operator-led fund backing India's AI-first founders

Founded by Freshworks' Girish Mathrubootham, Together Fund pitches itself as 'India's first operator-led VC' — $85M and $150M funds behind Indian SaaS going global, now pivoted hard to AI, with the Together AI Studio writing up to $1M cheques plus $600K in cloud credits.

Together Fund (together.fund) calls itself "India's first operator-led VC" — a fund run by founders, for founders. Founded by Girish Mathrubootham, the founder and CEO of Freshworks (India's first NASDAQ-listed SaaS company), its pitch is blunt: money is a commodity; what it sells is operator time, mentorship and a 150+ founder and operator network. The original 2021 mission — back Indian SaaS startups building global products from India and make India a true "Product Nation" — has since pivoted decisively to AI: the current tagline is "Building Iconic AI, Together."

Thesis and sweet spot

Together Fund likes to be the first institutional investor and does the heavy lifting on zero-to-one: product-market fit, go-to-market, hiring. Sectors: early-stage B2B SaaS and AI — horizontal and vertical SaaS, devtools, cloud-native infrastructure, API-first products and healthcare AI — with a strong US-India corridor focus and a San Francisco office. Cheques ran $250K–$3M in Fund I; Fund II writes $1M–$5M, targeting around 25 companies.

Fund sizes

Fund I: $85M, announced July 27, 2021, invested in roughly 20 startups. Fund II: $150M (first close), announced July 27, 2023, deploying from Q1 2024 with an explicitly AI-first mandate — a reported final close timeline of June 2025 could not be confirmed. In August 2026, Moneycontrol reported the firm is in talks for a Fund III of $150–170M (possibly $200M) to double down on AI — reported as in-talks only, not announced.

Notable portfolio

The official portfolio lists 35+ companies, and the AI pivot shows: Emergent (AI IDE, seeded 2024) raised a $70M Series B in January 2026 led by Khosla Ventures and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with Together participating — $100M raised in seven months, 5M+ users, $50M ARR. Composio raised a $24M Series A from Lightspeed, Elevation and Together. Fund I follow-ons include Kula, Privado, RevenueHero, Spendflo, Spry and Toplyne, alongside newer AI names like Confido, Wispr Flow, Metaforms, Nex, Protecto, Togai, Zipy and DreamTeam.

People

Girish Mathrubootham is the founding partner and public face. The partnership includes Shubham Gupta (ex-Matrix Partners India) and Lakshmi Shankar, who joined as General Partner in July 2024 (ex-Google VP of Search, ex-Twitter) and heads the SF office. Founding partner Manav Garg (Eka Software) was reported in August 2026 to have moved into an executive role at portfolio company Emergent; co-founding partner Avinash Raghava's current role is ambiguous across sources.

Programs and perks

The flagship programme is Together AI Studio — venture-building for AI-first founders with up to $1M in funding, a structured 12-week programme plus US immersion (a cohort kicked off April 15, 2025 in Bengaluru with a final week in the US). Reported perks: $600K+ in cloud credits from OpenAI, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, plus dedicated Bengaluru office space. Beyond that: operator help, CEO-coach access and vendor partner deals.

Why it matters for founders

Together Fund is one of the few Indian funds where the partners have actually scaled a global SaaS company — and the AI Studio's $1M-plus-$600K-credits package is a serious on-ramp for early AI founders. If you're building AI-first from India for the world, this is a fund that speaks your language. Watch for the reported Fund III — fresh capital means fresh appetite.