Girish Mathrubootham* plays a lot of poker these days.

He has always dabbled in some sport—from table tennis to football to chess. But poker has a lot to do with his new persona. “The savviest of investors in the Valley play poker,” he said over a Zoom call from San Francisco.

Earlier in September, the 50-year-old entrepreneur saidEconomic TimesGirish Mathrubootham to exit Freshworks he would exit Freshworks, the $3.7 billion SaaS company he built 15 years ago. He’s the one who showed how to use venture capital to build a globalIn 2021, Freshworks listed on the Nasdaq as an 11-year-old firm, making it one of the most successful Indian startups. SaaS company.

But now, he has switched sides.

For his second innings, Mathrubootham’s focus is on Together Fund, an AI-focused, early-stage VC firm. His long-time friend and fellow SaaS entrepreneur Manav Garg had the idea of setting up a homegrown blue-chip VC fund. The firm was set up in 2021—two months before Freshworks’ IPO—and it has invested $110 million in seed cheques in 35 AI startups building for the US and India.

It’s a space that’s already frothing. Early-stage valuations of AI startups have more than doubledEconomic TimesVCs chase Indian developer tools startups amid AI frenzy in months, thanks to top-tier VC firms (Peak XV, Accel, Lightspeed Ventures, and Elevation Capital) dousing them in capital. For example, vibe-coding startup Emergent raised $5.5 million in a seed round from Together at a $30 million valuation in December 2024. Eight months later, it raised $20 million more from Lightspeed at a $90 million valuation.

Like Emergent, about 60% of Together’s portfolio has raised higher follow-on rounds from other VCs, said Garg. For other top-tier firms, this would only be 10–15%, he claimed. The Ken could not independently verify this.

In all, about 150 Indian AI startups have raised about $650 million in funding after 2022—when OpenAI launched ChatGPT—according to market-data provider Tracxn.

The bigger goal for Garg and Mathrubootham is to put India on the AI-product map and help create a $100 billion AI-focused firm.