Best Place To Build

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

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Jan 9, 2026·1h 3m·Watch on YouTube ↗

📖 CHAPTERS

1. 1

   Factory “music” and why Zetwerk is software-led at massive scale

   Amrit opens with a feel for factories and the operational reality of running manufacturing at scale. He frames Zetwerk as a physical-parts business powered by software, where complexity grows into “Murphy’s law at scale.”

2. 2

   Manufacturing-as-a-Service: what Zetwerk actually delivers to customers

   Amrit explains Zetwerk’s core offering: taking customer designs, engineering them into manufacturable specs, selecting suppliers, and project-managing delivery. The product is reliability, transparency, and on-time quality at industrial scale.

3. 3

   How a single order gets split across suppliers—and how AI helps match capability

   The conversation zooms into how Zetwerk allocates work across multiple factories per order. Amrit describes capability “underwriting” (matching machinery/skills, not past identical experience) and the role of software/AI in decomposing drawings into required processes.

4. 4

   Why India’s SME manufacturing + GST created the perfect timing advantage

   Amrit outlines India’s manufacturing structure—clusters of SMEs built around anchor customers—and how GST reduced cross-state friction. Zetwerk benefited by entering right as supply chains were shifting from regional to national, letting them solve growth (capacity) rather than only cost.

5. 5

   Selling growth, not discounts: solving backlog-driven supply constraints

   A key go-to-market insight: large manufacturers often have massive backlogs and want more throughput more than lower prices. Zetwerk’s pitch is aligned with customer urgency—add capacity and compress timelines—making adoption easier.

6. 6

   Pivot story: from trying to sell software to becoming transactions-first

   Zetwerk initially tried to sell software to cover procurement ‘white space’ before and after PO issuance. They discovered selling software in India was difficult, but customers still wanted help finding suppliers—leading to a pivot to using the software internally while delivering outcomes.

7. 7

   The defensibility: operational complexity, digital visibility, and reliability compounding

   Amrit addresses why Zetwerk is hard to copy despite the concept sounding straightforward. The moat is execution at scale: real-time visibility across thousands of jobs, shrinking time in micro-steps, and handling constant edge-case failures in manufacturing and logistics.

8. 8

   From horizontal platform to deep vertical excellence: transformers as the case study

   Zetwerk’s next phase is going deeper into specific categories to improve technical and production bottlenecks, not just match supply to demand. Transformers illustrate this: extreme backlogs driven by data center growth require capacity creation and engineering-level problem solving.

9. 9

   Scaling the org: blending founders’ engineering DNA with professional category CEOs

   As operations expanded (including owning factories), Zetwerk added senior industry leaders to run business lines and keep execution tight. This frees founders to focus on higher-leverage category creation and system design while pushing operational metrics from good to world-class.

10. 10

    Macro tailwinds and strategic focus: China+1, reindustrialization, and where Zetwerk plays

    Amrit distinguishes between foresight and problem familiarity: he knew the reliability problem from ITC, then discovered the most powerful wedge is solving growth in sunrise sectors. Zetwerk avoids ultra-optimized legacy supply chains (like conventional auto) until later.

11. 11

    Funding to win scale economics: investor story, seed difficulties, and uniqueness (N=1)

    Amrit explains why Zetwerk raised significant venture capital: manufacturing rewards scale through better cost of capital, procurement leverage, and operational efficiency. He recounts raising ~$750M and how early fundraising was harder because the model didn’t fit then-popular templates.

12. 12

    IPO thinking: balancing perfectionism, growth velocity, and long-term public shareholders

    Amrit shares how they’re evaluating going public and the psychological hurdle of wanting perfection before listing. He emphasizes the need to enter public markets at a strong growth moment while helping long-horizon investors understand a rare combination of scale and velocity.

13. 13

    Co-founder relationships and complementary strengths: Srinath, rituals, and founder “therapy”

    The discussion turns personal: how Amrit and co-founder Srinath built trust over years (IITM, exchange program, ITC postings) and why that partnership is central. Amrit highlights complementarity—people magnet vs. systems thinking/paranoia—and the rituals that sustain founders through hard phases.

14. 14

    IIT Madras, CFI, and advice to students: depth, first principles, and doing over theorizing

    Amrit reflects on IITM’s builder culture and how it shaped his life (friends, wife, fundraising via Saarang). He advises students to avoid shallow entrepreneurship-for-coolness, build depth, and prioritize real-world execution over overconsuming content and frameworks.

15. 15

    Closing: Bhubaneswar shout-out and wrap-up

    The episode ends with a quick hometown connection and encouragement for more founders from Bhubaneswar. The host wraps with a call to follow Zetwerk’s journey and closes the recording.