Freshworks, Eka founders to set up fund for SaaS startups: Report

Freshworks co-founder Girish Mathrubootham, Eka Software founder Manav Garg, and Shubham Gupta, who formerly led the SaaS portfolio at venture capital firm Matrix Partners, will reportedly set up a venture capital fund by March-end.

Dubbed Together, the new fund with a total target corpus of $80-$100 million, will back homegrown startups operating in the consumer software and software-as-a-service (SaaS) segments, The CapTable said, citing four people briefed on the matter.

The fund aims to invest $250,000-$1.5 million each in the startups, the report said.

Citing the fund deck, the report claimed that Together was raising capital aggressively and expected to see interest from over three dozen investors, including Unacademy co-founder Gaurav Munjal, Cred’s Kunal Shah, Chargebee’s Krish Subramanian and Browserstack’s Ritesh Arora.

“It is expected to be all external capital from LPs, from a bunch of founders, and they are also in talks to get some institutions on board. They are at the final stages of closing the commitments,” the report said, citing a venture capital investor familiar with the matter.

Together, the report said, pitches itself as a platform “For Founders, With Founders, By Founders”. The entity looks to offer budding SaaS entrepreneurs mentorship from experienced founders, functional experts and the peer founder community to help them avoid early mistakes and scale faster, the report said.

The fund has not been officially announced yet. Mathrubootham and Garg did not respond to TechCircle’s queries.

The development comes as the software segment continues to pick up pace in India.  

According to a recent Bain & Co report, there were 7,000-8,000 SaaS companies in India as of December 10, 2020. Of the total, 1,200 firms have raised capital, with more than 40 scooping up funds in growth-stage rounds, it said. Indian SaaS companies, the report said, are poised to clock in $18-$20 billion in revenue and capture up to 9% of the global SaaS market by 2022.