Manav Garg: From Trader to Together Fund - Building India's AI & SaaS Future
Meet Manav Garg: SaaS pioneer, SaaSBOOMi Co-founder, Operator-VC at Together Fund ($250M+ AUM). Explore his full journey & AI vision.
Manav Garg stands as a pivotal figure in India's technology narrative. He's the founder who built one of India's pioneering global SaaS product companies, Eka Software Solutions, from scratch. He's the community builder who co-founded SaaSBOOMi, shaping India's "Product Nation" dream. And now, he's the operator-turned-investor leading Together Fund, backing the next wave of AI and SaaS innovators. His journey is one of resilience, deep domain insight, and a relentless drive to build from India, for the world.
I recently had the privilege of hosting Manav on the Founder Thesis podcast for an incredibly candid conversation diving deep into his remarkable journey – the pivots, the challenges, the learnings.
Check out the video of the conversation here or read on for insights.
🌱 Early Life & The Seeds of Entrepreneurship
Manav's story doesn't start in a bustling tech hub, but in Moga, a small town in Punjab known primarily for its Nestle factory, where his father worked as an engineer. Growing up, entrepreneurship was in the air – many relatives ran small-scale businesses. Manav witnessed his father's own attempts at starting businesses, learning early lessons in resilience and the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial path.
I grew up, everybody was just doing the business. So I learned a lot of, you know resilience, understanding, going through ups and downs during those days. So I think that was always in mind that I want to do something of my own.
A significant early hurdle was language; Manav grew up speaking Punjabi and only became proficient in English during his engineering college years at REC (now NIT) Jalandhar. This experience of adapting and overcoming limitations would prove formative. After engineering, he pursued an MBA in International Business from the prestigious Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), Delhi, equipping him with a unique blend of technical understanding and global business acumen.
🌏 The Trader's Epiphany: Finding the Gap
Post-MBA, Manav resisted the allure of domestic branding roles he initially craved and, somewhat serendipitously, landed a high-paying commodity trading job with GP Group in Singapore. Despite initial reluctance ("I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't feel like traveling out of India. I'm a diehard Indian national..."), his lateral thinking impressed the recruiters.
He thrived, specializing first in rice and then rapidly scaling the green coffee trading desk. Immersed in the world of physical coffee trading across Southeast Asia, dealing with global giants like Lavazza and P&G, he experienced a critical pain point firsthand.
During that exposure, I understood that, you know all of us are doing all the work manually. For example, if I will do the trade, I will write on a piece of paper, give it to somebody in the back office. He or she will enter in the spreadsheet and then we are trying to understand what the position is in the morning. Sometimes numbers are wrong.
This wasn't a theoretical problem; it was a daily operational inefficiency in managing complex Commodity Trading and Risk Management (CTRM) processes. This gap, identified through deep domain expertise, became the spark for Eka Software Solutions. Around 2003-2004, despite earning over $100,000 annually, he made the bold decision to quit his trading career and pursue this entrepreneurial vision, initially without even telling his family.
💡 Building Eka Software Solutions: A SaaS Pioneer
Returning to India, Manav chose Bengaluru as his base. Lacking a software background but armed with deep process knowledge (famously documented on hundreds of sheets of paper), he needed capital and technical expertise. Demonstrating characteristic hustle, he secured a crucial $1 million seed investment from his former employer's chairman, after simply knocking on his door.
Within what, I think half an hour, he said, fine, I'll back you. Then he made me meet all his partner or managing directors. And that's how actually the journey started.
Eka (initially conceived as "eCoffeeConnect," focusing on automating the back office) launched its first product within nine months in 2004. Manav relentlessly pursued early customers through direct outreach and travel. The key differentiator? He understood their world.
People used to like me because I could speak their language. And then I could transfer it back into design. Because if you're a trader normally, jargons are also the deep problems.
Remarkably, Eka achieved profitability within its first year, signing five customers at around $70,000-$100,000 each. Manav handled all sales himself until the company reached ~$4 million in revenue. A pivotal early win was securing Noble Group as a client (a million-dollar contract initially), which helped establish Eka's credibility and fueled growth alongside other major clients like Cargill and Unilever.
☁️ Scaling Eka: The Cloud Pivot & Growth Journey
Eka's growth was marked by strategic funding and bold technological shifts:
Early Traction & Profitability: Profitable from year one, reaching $14 million in revenue and $5 million in profit by 2012. Manav noted they never actually used the initial $1M raised, funding early growth through customer revenue.
Series A (2009): Raised $10 million from Nexus Venture Partners to expand globally and beyond agriculture.
Private Equity (2013): Secured $40 million+ from Silver Lake Kraftwerk, fueling strategic acquisitions (EnCompass for Energy Trading, Matrix Group for Mining Logistics) and further expansion. Total funding reached approximately $56.8 million.
Peak & Challenge: By 2014, Eka hit $34 million in revenue with $9 million in profit post-acquisitions. However, a commodity market crash hit hard, impacting revenue.
The Cloud Pivot (2015-2016): Recognizing the inevitable shift, Manav championed a risky, complex pivot from Eka's client-server architecture to a fully cloud-native platform. This required convincing the board and investing ~$25 million from Eka's own balance sheet, navigating internal resistance, and weathering a temporary revenue dip.
Cloud Success: The pivot took nearly three years to fully implement, but by 2019, Eka was landing major cloud deals with giants like Cargill and Unilever, validating the strategy and rebuilding revenue (reaching ~$20M in recurring cloud revenue, equivalent to ~$50M in the old license model).
🏁 The Eka Exit: A Successful Transition
After two decades, having navigated multiple tech cycles and built a global leader in CTRM software, the time came for an exit, providing returns for long-term investors like Silver Lake and Nexus. In 2024, Eka Software Solutions was acquired by Symphony Technology Group (STG), a major US private equity firm, and merged with Quor Group (another STG portfolio company) to create a larger, more comprehensive CTRM player. Manav transitioned to a Board Advisor role for the combined entity, ensuring continuity.
🤝 Paying it Forward: Building the SaaSBOOMi Community
Parallel to scaling Eka, Manav became a passionate advocate for India's SaaS ecosystem. Driven by a "pay-it-forward" philosophy, he was a founding member of SaaSBOOMi.
Back in 2015, we didn't know how to build... cloud software companies from India. So we thought, OK, we should all come together and just share our learnings.
SaaSBoomi has grown into Asia's largest SaaS community, fostering peer learning and collaboration. It now boasts over 6,500+ founders as members, with the Indian SaaS industry it supports generating over $1.5 billion in annual revenues from around 800 active companies within the community. Manav played a key role in its formalization and strategic direction.
🚀 The Next Chapter: Together Fund - The Operator-VC
Manav's commitment to nurturing founders crystallized in July 2021 with the co-founding of Together Fund.
Together Fund embodies the "Operator-VC" model – built by founders, for founders.
Fund I: Raised $85 million, uniquely backed by ~150 founders and operators, alongside VCs like Insight, Tiger, Sequoia, Accel, Nexus, and Lightspeed.
Fund II: Targeting $150 million (final close anticipated mid-2025).
Total AUM: Managing over $250 million across funds.
Portfolio: Invested in ~30+ startups (as of early 2025), including names like Spry, RapidClaims, Composio, Thesys, Metaforms, Unstruct, Jhana, and Confido.
🧠 Investment Thesis: AI, SaaS Evolution & Large Markets
Together Fund initially focused on early-stage SaaS but has sharpened its focus significantly towards the intersection of SaaS and Artificial Intelligence with Fund II. Manav believes AI is creating a paradigm shift.
AI Agents aren't just hype – they're fundamentally changing how enterprise software works... moving beyond clicks to commands.
Key tenets of their thesis include:
"Software + Salary TAM": AI allows software to automate human tasks, expanding the addressable market beyond just IT spend to include operational salary budgets.
AI-Native Focus: Backing companies building solutions ground-up with AI, often leveraging agentic capabilities.
Key Sectors: Strong focus on areas like US Healthcare (a multi-trillion dollar opportunity), AI Infrastructure, Sales & Marketing Tech, Customer Support, and "Services-as-Software."
Large Markets: A bias towards large markets that offer more room for pivots and significant scale.
🧭 Guiding Founders: Beyond the Capital
The core philosophy at Together Fund is providing "know-how" – transferring operational wisdom gained from building companies like Eka and Freshworks. They focus on:
Instilling Discipline: Helping founders build methodically.
Product Craft: Emphasizing user experience and deep problem-solving.
Resilience & Learning: Supporting founders through inevitable pivots and challenges.
Network & Mentorship: Providing hands-on guidance and access.
Manav looks for specific traits in founders.
Resilience, his or her learning curve... How good is he or she is in building the product? We are a big believer of if you build a world-class product, we will start generating revenue.
His leadership is also guided by principles like focusing on people ("people work for people, people work with people") and a philosophy borrowed from the Bhagavad Gita: "Focus on effort and not on the result."
✨ Legacy and Future Outlook
Manav Garg's journey is a testament to building a global technology company from India against the odds. Eka's success paved the way for many others. Now, through SaaSBOOMi and Together Fund, he's actively shaping the next chapter of India's "Product Nation" story, particularly in the transformative field of AI. His transition from operator to ecosystem builder ensures his impact will continue to resonate for years.
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