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How Zetwerk's founders raised a unicorn in 3 years! | Amrit Acharya, BP2B S2 E17

For most of us, MaaS seems like a spelling mistake at first. To us, it means a description of weight or the latest movie at the theatres. MaaS is not any of that! Today’s episode features Amrit Acharya, CEO of Zetwerk, a unicorn in the Manufacturing as a Service (MaaS) industry. Amrit talks about how they started off with software as a product and then pivoted to manufacturing, how it keeps the engineer in him active, what MaaS as an industry actually involves and the challenges involved in managing manufacturing processes for multiple clients at the same time. Amrit talks about the unique music that each factory makes and his love for visiting new factories and listen to their hum. Both Amrit and Amrut also connect on beginning their careers after IIT at FMCG Companies. If you are curious about MaaS, how massive companies source their hardware, what manufacturing processes look like up close or are interested in Murphy’s law (this is an Easter egg), watch the full episode! Also, if you thought their names was the only thing our host and guest have in common, it’s not. Stay till the end to find out what else they share in common! Chapters: [00:02:06] Zetwerk’s Growth and their Business Model [00:09:30] Shift from Software Sales to Manufacturing as a Service [00:15:00] Why others cannot copy Zetwerk’s model [00:18:48] Amrit’s journey into Engineering and Zetwerk [00:21:00] Amrit’s Co-Founders and their Focus [00:24:15] Zetwerk’s operational scale and its complexity [00:37:44] Zetwerks’ Funding Journey and Investors [00:41:20] Future Plans and thoughts on going Public [00:45:20] History and relationship with his Co-Founders [00:53:39] Amrit’s time at IITM and how the campus has changed [00:58:22] Amrit’s advice to young students and founders [01:02:50] Wrap with a shout to Bhubaneswar #Zetwerk #ManufacturingasaService #CFI #Hardware #WindTurbines #SolarPanels #Electronics #ManufacturingNetwork #Bhubaneswar #BestPlacetoBuild #IITMadras

Amrit AcharyaguestAmruthost
Jan 8, 20261h 3mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Zetwerk’s software-led manufacturing playbook for scaling industrial supply chains fast

  1. Zetwerk provides Manufacturing as a Service by converting customer designs into production-ready specs, selecting capable suppliers, and project-managing delivery with transparency and reliability.
  2. The company began as a B2B software pitch but pivoted when software selling proved difficult in India, using the software internally to run a transaction-first manufacturing business.
  3. Zetwerk’s differentiation comes from software-enabled visibility across thousands of suppliers plus hard-won operational know-how, making the model extremely difficult to replicate at scale.
  4. Growth has been accelerated by macro tailwinds (GST-enabled national supply chains, China+1, India’s industrialization) and by focusing on customer “growth constraints” (capacity/backlogs) rather than only cost savings.
  5. Amrit discusses Zetwerk’s capital strategy (raising ~$750M), category deepening (e.g., transformers), leadership layering with industry CEOs, and considerations for an eventual IPO.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Reliability is the product, software is the enabler.

Zetwerk wins by delivering on-time quality with proactive root-cause visibility; the software layer makes execution measurable across thousands of concurrent contracts and shareable with customers to build trust.

In India, software-only sales can fail; attach software to outcomes.

Early customers liked the idea but resisted paying for software; demand existed for new suppliers and execution, so Zetwerk embedded software into a transactions-first manufacturing business where value is undeniable.

Solve customers’ growth bottlenecks before chasing cost optimization.

Zetwerk’s strongest wedge is expanding production capacity (e.g., increasing output against multi-year backlogs); once embedded, “day two” can shift toward efficiency and cost reduction.

Replication risk is lower than it looks because operations don’t scale linearly.

Coordinating 70M parts/year across ~7,000 suppliers triggers constant edge cases (tariffs, quality escapes, delays); the accumulated playbooks, data, and vendor/customer trust are hard to copy quickly.

Macro timing mattered: GST and supply-chain re-wiring created an entry window.

As firms moved from regional to national supply chains post-GST, they were more open to new partners who could unlock capacity and simplify procurement, enabling Zetwerk to break into conservative enterprise accounts.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

We are a business of producing physical parts. That’s the business, but we do it in a very software-led approach.

— Amrit Acharya

SAP was only a transaction recording tool… there was two months of work that goes before issuing a purchase order, and there’s two months of work that goes after.

— Amrit Acharya

It is Murphy’s law at scale. You know, everything that can go wrong, goes wrong.

— Amrit Acharya

Our North Star is: How do I shrink… hours in the whole manufacturing process?

— Amrit Acharya

Don’t start a company without Srinath… or equivalent of Srinath.

— Amrit Acharya

Manufacturing as a Service (MaaS) modelSupplier underwriting and capability matchingPivot: selling software to using software internallySoftware-led operational visibility and reliabilityIndia SME manufacturing clusters and post-GST shiftScaling complexity and Murphy’s lawCategory deepening: transformers, solar, wind, electronics, EV

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