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

Amrit Acharya 0:00 There's a music in every factory-

Amrut 0:01 Yeah

Amrit Acharya 0:01 - which is unique. Like, it's how the parts get produced.

Amrut 0:04 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 0:05 We raised the investment and we built the software, but we realized in India it's very hard to sell software. And I think the DNA helped. Honestly, we have scaled a lot. Today, this year we'll do close to $2 billion of, like, revenue. We are a business of producing physical parts. That's the business, but we do it in a very software-led approach. And, uh, the, the- it is Murphy's law at scale. You know, everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. [upbeat music]

Amrut 0:29 Hi, this is Amrit. We are at IIT Madras, my alma mater, and India's top university for people who like to build. We are here to meet some builders, ask them: What are you building? What does it take to build? And what makes IIT Madras the best place to build? [upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to The Best Place to Build podcast. Uh, today I'm sitting with Amrit Acharya. He's the CEO and co-founder of Zetwerk. It's a unicorn in the manufacturing space. Uh, he was also a student here from 2006 to 2010, so we'll get to learn a little bit about what Zetwerk does, and his journey so far. Welcome to the podcast.

Amrit Acharya 1:21 Thanks, Amrit. Should mention the time, it's 7:20 in the, in the morning.

Amrut 1:25 Yeah. [chuckles]

Amrit Acharya 1:25 Very early. Yeah.

Amrut 1:26 It's 7:20 in the morning, um, and, uh, I'm very grateful. We do shoot very early in the morning because the place we shoot, the Center for Innovation, is an active lab.

Amrit Acharya 1:35 Mm.

Amrut 1:36 Uh, and so what happens is that students come, and they drill, and they cut-

Amrit Acharya 1:40 Yeah

Amrut 1:41 ... and, uh, it's not possible to shoot at that time. Uh, thank you so much. Okay, so Amrit, uh, the Zetwerk, you're of course, four co-founders, so the- together you have created a behemoth in just six years. I have this memory- [chuckles]

Amrit Acharya 1:56 [chuckles]

Amrut 1:56 ... of walking into your office in, uh, in 2019 maybe.

Amrit Acharya 2:01 Yeah.

Amrut 2:01 You were just 20 people, edges of a small office, and now you have- you are this

Amrut 2:06 behemoth company which is everywhere. So walk me through what happened, like, how did it, uh, move from there to here?

Amrit Acharya 2:13 Yeah, I think you're one of the few people who've actually seen us in our first office.

Amrut 2:16 Mm.

Amrit Acharya 2:17 So it was a apartment turned into an office. Um, so we started a company in 2018, um, and, uh, yeah, it's been seven years, roughly, for us. Um, so we... What we do is, we, we offer Manufacturing as a Service, um, to industrial clients. Our customers would be, like, Siemens, Schneider, GE. They want to make some product, uh, they give us the designs, we do fine-tune engineering of that design, convert it into a detailed spec that can be shared with the factory, and then we select, uh, factories who can actually produce that part. And then we will project manage the whole thing to make sure everything is delivered on time, quality is excellent, uh, we offer full transparency, and, uh, essentially, it sums up to reliability. Like, our customers like us because we are reliable, they can give us the order and forget about it. And we have graduated over time. Today, we make wind turbines, we make solar panels, we make transformers, uh, heavy-duty engin- engineering goods. We also make a lot of devices. So we make, like, smart meters, we make, uh, laptop components, we make washing machine components. Um, but, uh... And over the period of time, we realized that, look, we can't have a pure third-party model where we just work with, uh, third-party factories. So today we do roughly one-third of production in-house. We have- operate our own plants, both in India, US, and Europe, and we partner with 5,000 plants across India, Vietnam, and Mexico. Uh, the whole point is, we have built a lot of software so that all of these distributed net- network, which is 5,000 third-party plants and 20 of our own in-house plants, in a way, operate like one plant. Um, so which is just behaving consistently on time, uh, no quality escapes, uh, complete transparency to the customer, and just being, like, a very reliable partner to these large companies.

Amrut 4:05 So suppose you get a... Say, you gave the example of wind turbine or, uh, solar panel-

Amrit Acharya 4:11 Yeah, yeah

Amrut 4:11 ... we'll stick to that example. Um, suppose you get an order like that, how many locations is that, uh, specific manufacturing distributed across?

Amrit Acharya 4:19 Yeah, on, uh... It can be anywhere between one to 10 suppliers, uh, but on average, it's closer to four.

Amrut 4:25 Okay.

Amrit Acharya 4:25 Um, so a single order will be distributed to four suppliers. Uh, today, one of those suppliers could be us, um, because we do around, uh, 30% in-house. Um, and, um, and, uh, we will, uh, we use a lot of now AI to kind of understand what is the basic building blocks that is required to produce this part. Think of it as CFI at scale, you know. We have, uh, workshops who have, uh, CNC machines, we have workshops who have autoclave machines for composites, we have people who do injection molding, metal fabrication. We'll take a drawing and understand that, okay, this is a combination of metal fabrication plus galvanization, and so we will find factories in our network who have those capabilities. They may not have made that component before, but the machinery they have, uh, is suitable to make that component before. Um, so that is the underwriting we do. It's not a lazy underwriting, that let's find somebody who's already made a wind turbine. Then, uh, then my customer doesn't need me, because the value we are adding is bringing new supply to the market, which was historically not accessible. They're technically capable, uh, because they have the machinery, and they have done similar things. Uh, and, uh, so that is the level of underwriting that we bring in.

Amrut 5:37 That's very cool. I think, uh, India has lots of these, uh, smaller suppliers-

Amrit Acharya 5:41 Mm

Amrut 5:41 ... who were maybe built-

Amrit Acharya 5:43 Yeah

Amrut 5:43 ... to support one factory, but now, because of a network like Zetwerk-

Amrit Acharya 5:47 Yeah

Amrut 5:47 ... um, can support. Right. Is that the core concept?

Amrit Acharya 5:49 In, in fact, that's the co- that's the main concept. Like, if you look at how India has industrialized, you compare it with, like, the West or China, uh, largely, India is a SME-driven manufacturing base. There are, uh, one lakh SM- one million SMEs operating in the manufacturing domain.... across fabrication, across machining. They all operate in clusters, so you'll go to Bangalore, there's a place called Peenya.

Amrut 6:14 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 6:15 It's a machining hub. Uh, you go to Trichy in the south, uh, it's a fabrication hub. Now, the reason they are hubs is because they were set up by one or two anchor customers. Like Peenya was set up by HMT, um, Trichy was set up by BHEL. Uh, and some of this was just, uh, pre-GST era, where trade across states was very painful. Uh, so you had, uh, these whole townships emerge, which were, uh, basically extended arms of large companies who wanted a, a reliable vendor ecosystem in and around them. So you had Jamshedpur, which is essentially built by Tata, to service their, their whole ecosystem. But what happened is, in a post-GST world, uh, that fragmentation, uh, did not make sense, uh, because the best supplier, uh, he-

Amrut 7:02 Could be far away.

Amrit Acharya 7:03 Could be far away, and now had, uh, the barriers to trade had kind of disappeared. Because earlier you had, uh... We are old enough to remember there was this thing called C Form, BAT-

Amrut 7:12 A- and Octroi, and also-

Amrit Acharya 7:14 Yeah, the-

Amrut 7:14 ... Roadtax

Amrit Acharya 7:14 - trucks would get stopped at the border, you know?

Amrut 7:17 Exactly.

Amrit Acharya 7:17 So, uh, they sometimes still do. But, uh, you know, the, the barrier to trade has, like, simplified a lot. Uh, and hence, if you extend that out to 10, 20 years, 30 years, you know, this ecosystem may not exist in the way it's- it was for the last 20, 30 years. Um, I would say, I would like to take credit for recognizing that, but we honestly did not think that deeply. But we started the company in 2018, which is one year after GST had been implemented, so it was perfect timing for a company like us. Uh, the hardest part in our business is to get a large company like Tata or Siemens to trust us because, uh, they are conservative buyers. Uh, they- they're not waking up and saying, "Let me find another new supplier." But as they were transitioning from a regional supply chain to a national supply chain, uh, that was a good point for us to enter these industries, uh, because we were essentially solving a growth problem for them than solving a cost optimization problem for them. And every time you're trying to solve a growth, growth problem, you're creating a new market. That's just easier to build a business than, you know, I'll just say I'll build a better version of something that already exists.

Amrut 8:25 Yeah. And as you're saying it, I've- I, I can feel that growing windmills or growing solar panels has a manufacturing supply-side block.

Amrit Acharya 8:34 Yeah.

Amrut 8:34 It is not that you don't want to grow, it's just that you can only grow as much as your factories can produce.

Amrit Acharya 8:39 Yeah. In fact, that's the- that's what we look for. Like, uh, in wind turbines, one of our customers is the top three wind turbine companies in the world. Uh, they have a backlog of 3,000 wind turbines. They're able to produce 300 a year, uh, so it's a eight-year, 10-year backlog. And when you go to them and say that, uh, "You know, I can, uh, help you increase the production from 300 to 400," uh, you know, it's easier to have that conversation because their interests are completely aligned. Uh, versus when I said, "Look, I'll still produce 300, but at a lower price." They say, "Yeah, it's interesting, but let me think about it later. You know, I have a bigger problem today."

Amrut 9:17 That's fair. If your, if your backlog is eight years, that's your biggest problem-

Amrit Acharya 9:20 Yeah

Amrut 9:20 ... not cost.

Amrit Acharya 9:21 Yeah.

Amrut 9:22 That's fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that. But you started as a software, and, um, so is this, is this a software thing

Amrut 9:30 that allowed you to scale, or?

Amrit Acharya 9:31 Yeah. So we, we, we started in 2018, um, with this pitch that, "Look, we'll build software that will do everything that I just described," uh, which will help find good suppliers, project manage, track quality, track timelines. Our thinking then was, you had traditional software like, uh, SAP, which was good to issue a purchase order, uh, but there was, uh, two months of work that goes before issuing a purchase order, and there's two months of work that goes after issuing a purchase order, uh, which is how to find a supplier and how to track whether the, uh, order is going on time or not. And, uh, we felt that was a complete white space. There was no software that really did that. It was only a- SAP was only a transaction recording tool. Um, and our first round of investment, uh, was with that thesis, that we'll build software to plug this gap. Uh, we raised the investment and we built the software, but we realized in India, it's very hard to sell software. Uh, that was one of the struggles we faced. A lot of our customers would verbally indicated that they would love to be anchor customers or, you know, pilots, or... Suddenly when it came time to purchasing, then their behavior completely changed, and, uh, you know, gave all sorts of excuses, you know, "Come back in the next quarter," or... Uh, the weirdest one we heard was from L&T, who said, "We have L&T Infotech inside. Uh, I'll just give you- them your deck, and they will build the software for me." You know, so we realized it's gonna be hard. Uh, but all these people we spoke to, they were still asking us, "Can I use your software to find new suppliers? You know, that's the biggest problem I'm facing today." And so we pivoted, uh, from, uh, selling software to using our own software to be a transactions-first business. Um, and, and, uh, and I think the DNA helped. Honestly, we have scaled a lot. Today, this year, we'll do close to $2 billion of, like, revenue. Um, we've done this in, like, seven years, so our five-year, six-year CAGR growth rate is around, like, 90%. You know, we've been roughly, like, doubling every year for seven years. And, uh-

Amrut 11:38 Yeah, I mean, when I was looking at your CAGR, I was reminded of, uh, a, a math puzzle that we used to do in JE times-

Amrit Acharya 11:44 Yeah

Amrut 11:45 ... which would be like, uh, a king offers you to $1 today and doubles it-

Amrit Acharya 11:52 Yeah

Amrut 11:52 ... every day. Would you take that or would you take, uh, $100 now?

Amrit Acharya 11:57 Mm-hmm.

Amrut 11:58 And how many days will it take? And, like, this whole insane geometric progression.

Amrit Acharya 12:02 Yeah. But some of it is the business model. We can get into it, but, like, the, the pure scalability has happened because of the software orientation on day one-

Amrut 12:11 Okay

Amrit Acharya 12:11 ... you know? It is a- we are a business of producing physical parts.... that's the business. But we do it in a very software-led approach. So we are a software-led manufacturer, which is very unique. There's nobody else like us in the industry. We can-- at any poi- at any point in time, I'm running ten thousand contracts. I can tell you each contract is twenty percent done, or thirty percent done, or eighty percent done, who's producing it, when was the last quality check done, uh, what was the problems that came? Do I need to change my supplier midway? Uh, the logistics part, we track. You know, so we have full visibility into our own business, and then it becomes easy to just say that I will share this visibility with my stakeholders or my customers and suppliers, which increases trust, right? Like, because my customer has never seen someone like me before. He was, uh, uh, doing two things. One is, when I'm saying I'll deliver in thirty days, I'm actually delivering in thirty days, uh, or sometimes delivering in twenty-five days. Or if there is a delay, I'm proactively sharing, like, "Hey, this is why there's a delay. Uh, this is the root cause." Both of these things sometimes used to take months. Like, uh, when, when there's something has gone wrong, just to diagnose it, it takes months, because cust- companies are not equipped-

Amrut 13:30 Yeah

Amrit Acharya 13:30 ... to kind of react so quickly, right? And-

Amrut 13:32 They won't even know where the delay is.

Amrit Acharya 13:34 They will not know, and, uh, because we're digitally native. Um, and we really built the business around solving for time, like everything we do, our North Star is: How do I shrink half day, one day, one day, hours in the whole manufacturing process? There is, like, lot of small, small interventions. I'll give a simple example. Every time you, uh, invoice and you have to load a truck, in India, you have to make twenty documents. Uh, and depending on the complexity, it can take anywhere between two hours to eight hours just to prepare this set of documents. Um, because we are digitally-- and one of the documents is what is inside the truck. Uh, like, our suppliers will get hundred AutoCAD files, which is the design. They have to manually pick this part from this AutoCAD file is inside this truck, and, uh, and they have to be accurate, right? So it takes four to five hours. Because we're digitally native, it takes five minutes for us. So these are, like, small, small interventions that we have kind of, uh... Again, like, standalone, this is not a software feature, but as a package, it just simplifies complexity, right? So we are in the business of simplifying complexity, incre- improving reliability. We do it through all these small, small things.

Amrut 14:53 It's beautiful the way you explain it. Oh, I'm just thinking, you said your suppliers have never met someone like you. Your clients have

Amrut 15:00 never met someone like you. What stops someone else from just doing the same thing again? Is it something that will take a long time to do again by someone else?

Amrit Acharya 15:08 Yeah. No, no, I would-- I, in fact, uh, I would, in fact, welcome people to do this, say, for two reasons. One is we operate in a large industry. Like, uh, we are in manufacturing, which loosely defined, is a very large industry because the niches we pick, which we specialize in, and, and so we would welcome more people to join. Uh, that being said, I will say it's a extremely hard business. Uh, if I'm super honest, when we started the company, because we said we build software, we had a certain naivety about how hard the business would really be in all its operational complexity, you know? So, uh, today we produce seventy million parts a year through, you know, all these seven thousand odd suppliers that we work with. And, uh, the, the-- it is Murphy's law at scale. You know, everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. Uh, you discover newer and newer problems you had never imagined, uh, would be there. And because you're a larger business now, newer problems at scale become large problems. They're not like small problems, and they can, like, totally derail your business. The res- most recent one example is tariffs. Like, we sell into India, we sell to US. Like, a third of our revenue comes from US. Now, we have protected for a lot of things in our contracts, but tariffs is one thing nobody had imagined, like, uh, you know, that suddenly the tariffs would go up. Uh, so there was, like, a six-month chaos in our business, which we kind of had to refine, and we are now protected from it. Uh, but every day is a new day in our industry, right? So, so I would, uh... The warning I would give to any aspiring entrepreneur who wants to build a manufacturing-focused business is: It will take a decade minimum to, to feel that you are making a dent. Like, even today, half, half the time I wake up and feel anxious that, look, you know, we are still not on a very-- our foundations can be still stronger, you know? Uh, and uh, so it'll take a decade. Need extreme high pain tolerance, uh, because it's Murphy's law at scale. Uh, you will, uh, you will, uh... uh, it also requires that appreciation of being in a plant. Like, that's not everyone's cup of tea. Like, I tell people that I love, I love being in factories.

Amrut 17:30 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 17:30 Like, it's my happy place. Uh, like, every time somebody has built a new factory, uh, they invite me, and I-- that's my happy place. I go there, I spend half a day.

Amrut 17:39 Mm-hmm.

Amrit Acharya 17:39 You know, I, I learn something. So it requires that orientation, but if you have that orientation, you should do it.

Amrut 17:45 Yeah, I, I love that you're saying it like that. I think you started your career in ITC, right?

Amrit Acharya 17:48 Yeah.

Amrut 17:49 I started my career in Unilever.

Amrit Acharya 17:50 Yeah.

Amrut 17:50 Our first day of work was at a factory.

Amrit Acharya 17:52 Yeah.

Amrut 17:53 And, uh, the idea of going into a factory, there's a hum of the factory-

Amrit Acharya 17:56 Yeah

Amrut 17:56 ... there are people walking around. There's a process. There's a sort of a-

Amrit Acharya 18:01 There's a music in every factory-

Amrut 18:02 Yeah

Amrit Acharya 18:02 ... it is unique. Like, it's how the parts get produced.

Amrut 18:06 Yeah. Yeah, there's a rhythm.

Amrit Acharya 18:08 Yeah.

Amrut 18:08 How the parts move in, how the raw material moves in, how it moves out. And, um, I guess there are three-- like, in the beginning of a factory, there's chaos-

Amrit Acharya 18:18 Yeah

Amrut 18:18 ... for sure, but once it's-... set.

Amrit Acharya 18:22 Yeah, it's a lot of upfront work.

Amrut 18:23 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 18:24 Um, and, and, uh, and, uh, you need to enjoy it as a, as a founder.

Amrut 18:29 Uh, and, and, and also thinking that the way you describe it, uh, it's so core, right? Like, almost feels like this is what ITs were pitched as to the country, that we will- [chuckles]

Amrit Acharya 18:40 ... build this, uh, set of engineers who love building things-

Amrut 18:43 Yeah

Amrit Acharya 18:44 And, uh, a- and it's, it-- have you always been core-focused?

Amrit Acharya 18:49 You know, it's interesting. Uh, I have a photo of me... I have three photos, which my wife now shares. One is of me as a kid, building, uh, windmills using Lego blocks. Second is, uh, at ITC, uh, as my first job. Part of my job was to build windmills for ITC because they wanted to diversify into renewable sources, and today we build windmills at scale, you know. So from, uh, that arc, there's a continuation that's been there. You know, I've had, of course, my detours along the way. Um, so I've always enjoyed, uh, that, yeah, Lego building as a kid and, you know, I, I, I did, uh, Shastra, uh, when I-- at IIT Madras there. Like, we won Junkyard Wars-

Amrut 19:34 Mm

Amrit Acharya 19:34 ... uh, when we were in second years, and that got me an internship at Bosch in Bangalore. And, and, uh, that was my first experience living in a industrial kind of environment. And, yeah, I guess I've always been in that orientation. Uh, however, um, in campus, I also did a lot of Saarang. There was a, what is-- what was called a core. I don't know if that's still the-

Amrut 19:56 Yeah

Amrit Acharya 19:56 ... tech language. So I was a core in sponsorship, so my job was to raise money for Saarang, and in a way, that's what I do today. I raise money for our company. And I realized that, look, raising money for our company is hard, but in hindsight, raising money for Saarang was extremely hard because it was, uh, you know, again, like, we are all students. Um, so-

Amrut 20:16 So you're a core by Shastra, right?

Amrit Acharya 20:18 Yeah.

Amrut 20:18 IT is an engineering core.

Amrit Acharya 20:19 Yeah, yeah.

Amrut 20:19 So why are you raising money for a cultural festival?

Amrit Acharya 20:21 Yeah, exactly.

Amrut 20:21 Who's gonna come?

Amrit Acharya 20:22 Yeah, all of, all of those things. And, and my first job also was at ITC, which not, not like a-- I, I would, I would guess it's considered core. Um, it's not like going to a bank or a consulting firm.

Amrut 20:34 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 20:34 And so I've always gravitated in that direction. The only detour it took was when I went to business school, and then I joined McKinsey, but that was a one-year experiment. It didn't last too long. I liked McKinsey, but I knew I didn't, like, see myself becoming a partner there. And, and so when I came back to India from the US, um, I knew I wanted to start something in industry, in manufacturing, in, like, hardcore

Amrit Acharya 21:00 engineering. Um, and, um, yeah, that's, that's been my journey.

Amrut 21:06 This is gorgeous. Uh, are your, uh, co-founders also like this, where they're also very core-focused?

Amrit Acharya 21:11 Yeah, interesting. So one of my co-founders is Sreenath. Uh, he was also from IIT Madras, 2000, uh, same batch, 2010. Um, so we're all core-focused in our own way. Like, uh, like, uh, we had this thing called GE Edison Challenge back in the day, which was, uh, like, uh, just design and solve an industrial problem, and you compete with other colleges at scale. Uh, so one of the problems was, uh, they wanted to have, uh, the grid of the future. Uh, what does that look like? This is back in 2010, right? And, and, uh, so Sreenath won that competition, along with Kaushik and a few other folks. We now have a WhatsApp group called GE Edison Mafia, which is, like, five people, you know, uh, in that group. Um, and so we've always been little bit, yeah, like... I mean, first of all, we're all, like, engineers, so we like and appreciate engineering. Uh, and we've, we've-- I think we are lucky to have been able to combine in our careers a combination of keeping that engineering DNA, uh, with some commercial, uh, acumen around building a business or investing. So we get to access both muscles, uh, which is, uh, like a business financially will not succeed if we operationally do not succeed as an engineering company, you know? So they go very hand in hand together. Uh, it is the engineering DNA that drives financial outcomes versus the other way around, you know?

Amrut 22:40 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 22:40 And, and, and you'll just see that reflected in various choices we have made. Like, our company is full of engineers. Uh, they are, uh... Even our salespeople are all engineers.

Amrut 22:52 Oh, so as you were saying it, I'm thinking, you operate windmills, um, photovoltaic cells-

Amrit Acharya 22:58 Yeah

Amrut 22:58 ... solar cells, and I think you've gotten into electronics.

Amrit Acharya 23:00 Yeah.

Amrut 23:00 So it's, it's not just one field, it's a lot of engineering.

Amrit Acharya 23:03 Yeah.

Amrut 23:04 Chem, mech, civil-

Amrit Acharya 23:05 Yeah

Amrut 23:05 ... uh, electronic.

Amrit Acharya 23:06 And we're getting, we're getting deeper and deeper into it. Like, see, if I'm, like, honest, the first seven, eight years of the business was, in a way, building that platform, which can look at manufacturing as a horizontal. You know, that-- say that, okay, I have excess capacity at my supplier. I'm bringing that online into a platform, and I'm distributing it to a customer who has demand. You know, that's the core problem, and in that framing, everything is horizontal.

Amrut 23:33 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 23:33 Uh, I think we have gotten to a reasonable amount of, kind of, scale with that approach.

Amrut 23:40 Once again, as you speak about it, it sounds very simple, but when you're doing it across 1,000 suppliers-

Amrit Acharya 23:45 Yeah

Amrut 23:46 ... 5,000 suppliers.

Amrit Acharya 23:47 Yeah, it's an operational problem that we have solved. Uh, you know, how do I manage, uh, 10,000 projects? Uh, how many project managers do I need? What is the software layer I need? When-- How often should I check for quality? How often should I visit my supplier and do inspection?

Amrut 24:04 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 24:04 You know, those are the fundamental building blocks of problem statements that we have been solving, and-

Amrut 24:09 A- as you're saying-

Amrit Acharya 24:10 Yeah

Amrut 24:10 ... there'll be, like, 500 of these-

Amrit Acharya 24:13 Yes, yeah

Amrut 24:13 ... points.

Amrit Acharya 24:13 Yeah.

Amrut 24:14 It's not a, it's

Amrut 24:15 not a small set that you can just hold in your mind.

Amrit Acharya 24:17 It's, uh, it's, again, as I said, Murphy's law at scale. You know, everything that goes wrong, goes wrong, and, and, you know, it comes with no warning, right? So-... uh, but it's fundamentally like a supply chain or a operational problem, you know? So how do I design the business to operate at-- today we're doing two billion, but hopefully we can do five billion, you know, with the infrastructure that we have built. Uh, the next evolution of the business is, as we are, uh, reaching this kind of, I would say, mid-scale journey, and then we aspire to be much larger, uh, we have to go deeper into the nuts and bolts of the manufacturing. Like, say that my supplier is operating at twenty-three percent efficiency, can I take it to twenty-five or twenty-six or twenty-seven? Which is, let's say, the world standard in that category, right? And of course, I have to pick a few categories. I cannot do it as a pure horizontal. I have to do it as, uh, like, categories which I have deep conviction in. Part of that conviction comes from the platform approach. You notice patterns of demand and supply. You see that, okay, in certain categories, there is demand of hundred billion, but there is supply of ten billion. You know, there is not enough supply relative to demand, even in, within, within our own framing. And, and we say that, "Look, we should spend more and more time on this topic." I'll give a recent example. Uh, we have started selling this product called transformers. These are devices which once you produce power, you need to use it to feed it to the grid. It, uh, steps up the voltage, steps down the voltage. For the longest period of time, it was a commodity. Uh, but in the, the world of AI, where a data center is being built kind of every month, every day, uh, these items have become the bottleneck. Today, if you are OpenAI or Google and you want to buy a transformer, it'll take you four years, uh, to get their product.

Amrut 25:59 Is it?

Amrit Acharya 26:00 Yeah.

Amrut 26:00 There's a four-year backlog-

Amrit Acharya 26:02 ... Four-year backlog for transformers. And, uh, it was a two-year backlog, one and a half years back, so the backlog is getting worse, right? So there's not enough supply that's getting created. And so we have seen a lot of things in our business. We have rarely seen a four-year backlog for what historically was a commodity, right? And, and we feel like this is the best place for us to spend time, at least for the next six months, nine months. We bought a transformer company, uh, like last year. Um, we have close to one fifty, two hundred million dollars of orders for transformers that we have won from the US customer market. And, uh, and we're realizing the bottlenecks are, uh-- like, you can solve the problem with a suf- superficial level. Let's say you solve it by saying that there's a Tier One transformer company, like a CG Power or Hitachi, is a Tier Four or Tier Five transformer company. I will introduce a Tier Four, Tier Five transformer company to serve a Tier One demand, which is like a Go- Google or an OpenAI. That is a, a lazy way of problem-solving. Uh, you're compromising on quality, you're compromising on certain things just to get an order. The more deeper way to solve the transformer p- problem is to understand where is the bottleneck. Uh, the bottleneck is in something called a transformer tank, which is the chassis of the transformer.

Amrut 27:21 Right.

Amrit Acharya 27:21 Uh, it's a tailoring job because every chassis is unique. Uh, now, that's something we specialize in, so we are setting up a lot of, uh, capacity for automated transformer tank manufacturing. One of the cap-- one of the problems is something called the transformer core. So we are partnering with another company called JFE, which is one of the largest core manufacturers in the world, uh, to kind of dedicate some capacity for us in India. So we are going very, very deep into the nuts and bolts of this problem, other than applying lazy, uh, surface-level kind of problem-solving, right? And that requires us to be even more engineering-focused than we have ever been in our kind of history, right? It requires not solving a supply chain problem, but solving a material science problem, solving a, a robotics problem. Uh, you know, and, and, uh, all this is fun. You know, it's [chuckles] it, it, it keeps us, uh, busy, it keeps us motivated. Because, see, also when we've built a business in a software-led infrastructure-first approach, beyond a point, the business runs, runs, runs itself, you know?

Amrut 28:24 Right. Uh, yes, and also, I think, uh, you said that, uh, you, you put a number to your revenue. So I think the revenue flows down to your suppliers, so they are motivated to-

Amrit Acharya 28:34 Yes

Amrut 28:34 ... uh-

Amrit Acharya 28:35 It's a, it's an engine that works today, you know?

Amrut 28:37 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 28:37 We've overcome that cold start problem of which to build first, supply or demand, you know, and gone through that kind of journey, right? And today, it's an engine that two billion dollars growing at fifty percent year-on-year. Uh, uh, you know, it's growing business. Our, our... And, and the way we have structured our company is, we have five founders, but for various categories that I run, we have brought in professional CEOs who are, again, from the industry. Like, we have a US business, we got somebody from this company called Precision Castparts, which is a hardcore aerospace manufacturer, uh, owned by Berkshire. They do, like, I think twenty-five, thirty billion of revenue. Uh, now, he-- as good as it gets, you know, from-- for us, somebody like us to get somebody like him. In our electronics business, we got the India head of Foxconn to run the... So they're like-

Amrut 29:30 Josh?

Amrit Acharya 29:31 Josh. Yeah, you met Josh.

Amrut 29:32 I met, and I also, uh... I'm sorry, it's very silly of me, but his, his full name is Josh Folger.

Amrit Acharya 29:38 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amrut 29:38 And there's this, uh, anime called, uh, Spy x Family, where the-

Amrit Acharya 29:42 I have not seen that yet.

Amrut 29:43 No problem.

Amrit Acharya 29:44 [chuckles]

Amrut 29:44 I have a child, so I see all this.

Amrit Acharya 29:46 [chuckles]

Amrut 29:46 But the protagonist is Folger.

Amrit Acharya 29:48 Oh, is it? [chuckles]

Amrut 29:48 Every time I think of Josh Folger, I think of him.

Amrit Acharya 29:50 Yeah.

Amrut 29:51 In the, in the show, Folger can do anything. [chuckles]

Amrit Acharya 29:53 Oh.

Amrut 29:53 So- [chuckles]

Amrit Acharya 29:54 That's Josh.

Amrut 29:55 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 29:55 Uh, yeah, you can just... Then it adds a lot of leverage to us as founders, you know, so we can spend more and more time on the creative parts of the business. You know, one is, which is a new category I need to open, uh-

Amrut 30:06 O- once again, it's a very interesting word you have used-

Amrit Acharya 30:09 Yeah

Amrut 30:09 ... um, creative.

Amrit Acharya 30:11 Yeah.

Amrut 30:11 Because problem-solving in this kind of segment is a full creative exercise.

Amrit Acharya 30:15 Yeah.

Amrut 30:15 You don't think of hundreds of options, and you do sort of, uh... But I want to ask you, um, early in the business, there's a lot of that. It's very stimulating.

Amrit Acharya 30:23 Yeah.

Amrut 30:23 Is it still like that?

Amrit Acharya 30:25 You know, that's what we are trying to design it for-

Amrut 30:27 Mm-hmm

Amrit Acharya 30:27 ... at least, uh, for our literature. And, and-... see, these are all, like, relationships you learn by seeing the other side. You know, we didn't have this layer two years back, three years back. We had, uh, a change in business model, where, uh, we said we'll have some factories inside and some factories outside. And so what happened is, every operational problem became our problem. You know, the, uh, some machine broken in the factory, that was my problem. I had to solve it. Uh, and I mean, I don't mind solving that problem, uh, but is that the highest leverage use from our time standpoint? At some point, we realized that's not, you know, and hence we said, "Let's have somebody to keep the lights on, uh, make sure the business is running in, uh, uninterrupted." They are taking our operational metrics from ninety percent to ninety-nine percent, which itself is a journey, you know. Getting to ninety may take the same amount of time as getting from ninety to ninety-nine, you know?

Amrut 31:21 Understood.

Amrit Acharya 31:21 It's a continuous improvement, Kaizen kind of process.

Amrut 31:24 Um, for my knowledge, you spoke about efficiency of factory. At some point, you said twenty-five to twenty-seven percent. What is efficiency in a factory?

Amrit Acharya 31:32 No, I meant like, uh-

Amrut 31:34 You meant it like a concept.

Amrit Acharya 31:35 No, no, not like a concept. I, I was g- talking about a specific example. We do like solar. Um, there's a headline news in India, there is, um... there is, uh-- Two years back, there was a shortage of supply of people who could produce solar man- solar modules in India. Today, uh, because of government policy interventions, there's oversupply. There is a lot of solar module manufacturing capacity that has got created. In a way, that's good for us because excess capacity means a platform manufacturing marketplace works.

Amrut 32:10 Right.

Amrit Acharya 32:10 Less capacity, uh, it doesn't work as well. But when you go into the double click of that, uh, the best-in-class manufacturers in China operate at twenty-five to twenty-six percent efficiency, which means, um, for, um... uh, it's, it's, it's a metric which essentially measures how much power you're producing, uh, relative to the input that you're taking, right?

Amrut 32:36 Oh.

Amrit Acharya 32:36 And, uh, the Indian ones, maybe a handful of them will operate at twenty-five percent.

Amrut 32:42 Okay.

Amrit Acharya 32:42 Bulk of them will operate at twenty to twenty-three percent.

Amrut 32:44 You're talking about the product section?

Amrit Acharya 32:45 The products itself.

Amrut 32:46 Oh, okay. Understood.

Amrit Acharya 32:47 Now, in today's market, that is good because, you know, we did not have capacity. Any capacity is good enough. But over a long period of time, the twenty-two percent guys will get killed, uh, because the difference between twenty-two and twenty-six percent is four percent margin, uh, in a industry where, uh, you know, you're always under cost pressure eventually, right? So, so... and, and, uh, that analogy is what I was trying to use for us. You know, we have thrived in an environment where capacity is constrained. Uh, the fundamental reason for that is, if you look at thematically where we operate, we are operating in two powerful themes. One is, India as a country is, uh, heavily industrializing. Uh, In- first of all, India is growing. It's one of the fastest growing economies in the world. India had outsourced its, its industrialization to China, essentially for twenty years, thirty years.

Amrut 33:42 Like the rest of the world.

Amrit Acharya 33:43 Like the rest of the world. Realize now we should not have done it, and now we are heavily industrializing. So you're sitting at the intersection of two trends. The market size is growing, which is your economy, and your mix is shifting away from imports to domestic. Uh, so for a company like us, uh, that is, a combination of the two is our TAM, right?

Amrut 34:06 Understood.

Amrit Acharya 34:06 And, and, uh, the same thing is now happening in the US, which is one-third of our revenue. US may not be growing as much, but due to sheer scale, when it's saying that I want to move ten percent of my production from China to, uh, India or Vietnam or... It just, it's a tectonic shift in the global supply chain, you know, just a five percent, ten percent shift. We're already seeing India being the largest exporter of iPhones.

Amrut 34:32 Mobile phones, yeah.

Amrit Acharya 34:33 Um, and, uh, and it's just one product. You know, just imagine that happening for a thousand products, and, and, uh, that's the runway ahead of us. And, uh, and, uh, that is what fundamentally excites us, that, you know, it's a long, long, long journey of compounding ahead of us.

Amrut 34:51 I have written here that you are doing this at a time of China Plus One and Atmanirbhar Bharta.

Amrit Acharya 34:56 Yeah.

Amrut 34:56 Um, did you foresee this? Did you plan this?

Amrit Acharya 34:58 I mean, I-- Look, we... No. [chuckles] I think, I think, uh, uh, what we foresaw was, uh... Like, my first job was IT- at ITC, was to build a factory for them in Mysore. Uh, it would be a struggle to find a supplier, and it would be an even bigger struggle once you found a supplier, to get your things done on time. Uh, so this was a problem I was familiar with. I would order a part for thirty days, I would never get it in thirty days. On the thirtieth day, my supplier would say, "I've not started," you know, "I was doing something else." And we felt that, look, this cannot be the way an economy functions, you know. And, and, uh, somehow India's fo- continued to operate like that. But extrapolate ten years, twenty years now, then what does a, what does a factory of the future look like? Not that. [chuckles] You know, and, and, uh, and, uh, uh, I think that is what we wanted to build. Uh, along the way, we discovered that what we have built, the most powerful application is not when I'm solving a cost problem, which is what I was doing at ITCA. In a fundamental way, I was solving a cost problem.

Amrut 36:12 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 36:13 But where I can actually solve a growth problem, uh, those are, those are... That I will take to my credit, that we have been smart about operating in the industries we are operating in, and which are fundamentally sunrise industries, like your solar, wind. We do a lot of work for EVs. Uh, we do a lot of work in, uh-... on this whole precision manufacturing, which is electronics, and these are fundamentally new industries that are being created.

Amrut 36:38 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 36:38 Right? And we don't do a lot of auto, conventional auto, because conventional auto is one of the most efficient supply chains in the world. Uh, I will have a value prop for them, but I have to compete with somebody like a Maderson, who's pretty good, uh, on day one. But there's no Maderson equivalent in the industry that I operate in. And, and, and, uh, and hence, uh, when you're creating an industry from scratch, it's just way easier to compound than when you're building, uh- competing with somebody who already exists, even if you think you can be better, uh, at it than them.

Amrut 37:07 Understood.

Amrit Acharya 37:07 So we're leaving that second problem statement to five years later, when we are a much larger business.

Amrut 37:14 Then you will worry about cost and efficiency.

Amrit Acharya 37:15 We'll, we'll try and solve that problem for our customer. Our pitch to customers at, at day one value prop is time. We'll be faster, we'll be more agile. Uh, we can scale production from zero to $100 billion in two years. Our day two value proposition will be efficiency, which is making 100 billion of production at the lowest cost possible.

Amrut 37:34 How has been your funding journey? Because this-- I know you're profitable, but it-- obviously, it's not something that you can grow on your profits alone.

Amrit Acharya 37:42 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 37:44 See, you could, depending on your aspiration levels. Like, it's, uh... So we have grown from zero to $2 billion in, what, seven years. You could have done it in fifteen years. Uh-

Amrut 37:53 Yeah, but you can't have ninety percent CAGR, right?

Amrit Acharya 37:55 Yeah, yeah, you cannot. That's what I'm saying. It- But that's a choice, right?

Amrut 37:58 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 37:59 Like, it's a choice as a, as a company. Now, we felt this choice was the right choice for us, uh, because in manufacturing, unlike or maybe similar to a lot of other industries, but definitely in, in manufacturing, a lot of, uh, economies accrue to scale. Like, the larger you are, the more efficient you are. Your cost of capital comes down, your cost of raw material purchase comes down, uh, your, uh, productivity improves, uh, as a large factory. And the analogy for this is our competition. Like our competition, our customers, they always like to work with large factories. Uh, and when they run out of large factories, they're forced to work with small factories, and the experience they get is very, very different. The large factories are, they're reliable, they produce on time. So we felt that we have to be as large as possible, as quickly as possible. That was one of the str- strategies we had. And, and hence we optimized for a high CAGR, high growth rate, uh, kind of a business. Um, and, and that did require, uh, capital, uh, support. Um, and, and so we have, uh, I think raised close to seven fifty million dollars over the last, uh, eight years, uh, from, uh, mostly like your, uh, venture capital ecosystem, like your Sequoia, uh, Excel, LightSpeed. Our last round was done by Khosla. Uh-

Amrut 39:26 Sorry, those are four of, like-

Amrit Acharya 39:27 Yeah

Amrut 39:28 ... very top, A-quality investors, right?

Amrit Acharya 39:30 Yeah, yeah. Uh, no, I- like, ours is, uh... I think in, um, at least in private markets, being N equal to one is a positive thing. Uh, because, uh, then, um, uh, and, and, and, and the DNA of these firms are they like to bring innovation to the world, right? And innovation often has no comparable.

Amrut 39:54 Right.

Amrit Acharya 39:55 Um, and, and-

Amrut 39:56 N equal to one, meaning you were the first to do this.

Amrit Acharya 39:58 First and really only business of its type-

Amrut 40:01 Yeah

Amrit Acharya 40:01 ... that, that, uh, exists. And, and now, when you go public, uh, I think you'll have to kind of, um, transition that, look, of course, we are a, uh, innovator and a first principles-driven company, but, you know, this is where we fit into the economy, fundamentally, right? And, and hence, this is how you can benchmark us and think about us over a five-year, ten-year, twenty-year time period. Uh, we are still navigating that, so I don't know what that's like. But at least in private markets, uh, people who've spent time with us, they really appreciate how unique we are. And, and, uh, and, uh, and being uniqueness is also hard sometimes because, uh, like the first-- when we tried, tried to raise our seed money... Se- uh, actually, our seed round was one of the hardest, uh, [chuckles] because we didn't have a business then, we had only a PowerPoint. And, uh, uh, we did not have a clear answer to: Are you the Uber for India, or are you the Airbnb for India? Uh, which was the dominant theme of investing in twenty eighteen, twenty seventeen. Uh, today, I think the investing world has matured a little bit. You're seeing a lot of, like, really unique companies being funded. Uh, but, uh, you know, it was not the case, uh, when we started.

Amrut 41:13 Right. So what does the next few years look like for Zetwerk? Are you going public?

Amrit Acharya 41:19 So we're,

Amrit Acharya 41:20 we're thinking about it. I think if things go well... Again, I don't know what it-- what it's like to be public, so the-- I've been s- I've been spending a lot of time with founders who have gone public, and I hear two things. One is, uh, they do f- they do feel that it can never be... There's this feeling, especially as engineers, that you want to be perfect. Uh, and in our industry, we are a, we are in an industry where perfection is rewarded. Like, our customer wants ninety-nine point nine nine percent efficiency, not ninety-nine percent efficiency, right? Um, we are doing that while combining speed, which is usually those two things don't marry. If you want perfection-

Amrut 42:04 And also, like, when you want perfection, you pull everything close to you.

Amrit Acharya 42:07 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amrut 42:07 And you are doing-

Amrit Acharya 42:08 Yeah

Amrut 42:08 ... a little bit of the opposite.

Amrit Acharya 42:09 Yeah.

Amrut 42:09 And I'm not saying that you're spreading it out.

Amrit Acharya 42:11 Yeah.

Amrut 42:12 Four per- four factories per order is not a huge spread-

Amrit Acharya 42:15 Yeah

Amrut 42:15 ... but it's still a spread.

Amrit Acharya 42:16 It's still a spread, yeah. Uh, and in an industry which didn't really know that it needed it, you know? People needed perfection, but they, especially in India, India, time value for money is, uh, questionable. You know, it's-

Amrut 42:29 Stretchable.

Amrit Acharya 42:29 It's stretchable, right? As the economy matures, I think there'll be a time value premium, which is not in our P&L today.... at some point, customers will pay us a premium for being, like, more fast, more agile. But today, our customers give us a premium by giving us more volume. Like, a customer who loves us will say, "I'll give you ten crore orders versus one crore orders, but the same price," you know? Uh, so, so speed and perfection combi- com- combination is what we're kind of, uh, trying to solve for. I'm segueing, but when I was speaking to founders, a lot of us- a lot of them have the same orientation. We want to be perfect when we go for a I- public market debut, right? And, and when I spoke to a bunch of them, they said actually none of them were, uh, but they realized intuitively that this is the right time. Again, it was not like a number or a metric. Uh, and I think intuitively to us also, it feels like the right time. Um, we are growing at a pretty healthy speed. We would like our new set of investors to also see the business when it's growing at a high velocity, uh, because from- in public markets, companies don't grow at that kind of, uh, velocity. And then you combine that with the business in our industry, you, you'll again find very few examples at... Actually, you find close to zero examples at our scale. We're growing at the speed that we are growing.

Amrut 43:52 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 43:53 Um, and, and, uh, and, uh, we want to show the new set of investors that, you know, why is this happening? So they can, they can take time to understand and appreciate, because the priv- private journey has been eight years. The public journey will be hopefully, you know, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years, you know?

Amrut 44:12 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 44:12 Yeah. And, and, uh, you want these people to be with you for decades, right? And, and, um, and so I'm trying to let go of that internal bias in my head that I need to be perfect when I look to go for that-

Amrut 44:29 Very nice

Amrit Acharya 44:30 ... public market debut.

Amrut 44:32 I guess Tarun went public with Aether-

Amrit Acharya 44:34 Yeah

Amrut 44:34 ... earlier this year.

Amrit Acharya 44:35 Yeah.

Amrut 44:35 And, uh, maybe May 6, 2025. I remember the date-

Amrit Acharya 44:40 Mm-hmm

Amrut 44:40 ... because it's my birthday. Um, and I, and they grew much slower than you-

Amrit Acharya 44:46 Yeah

Amrut 44:46 ... over a longer period. But, uh, when they hit the market, I guess the public market recognized them far more than the-

Amrit Acharya 44:55 Yes

Amrut 44:55 ... private market did.

Amrit Acharya 44:56 Yeah.

Amrut 44:56 They appreciated it quite a bit.

Amrit Acharya 44:57 Yeah, yeah, and he'll say that, like, uh, they've had a great journey as a publicly listed company, and, and, uh, yeah, that's something we hope to emulate.

Amrut 45:06 Nice. Okay, let's switch track from, uh, Zetwerk. Um, I heard and I saw in another interview that you and Srinath are very close friends.

Amrit Acharya 45:15 Yeah.

Amrut 45:16 The GE, uh, a- and I, I guess you were wingmates?

Amrit Acharya 45:20 Yeah, yeah, we were-- We have a long history, so we were in both the same hostel, to start with. Uh-

Amrut 45:26 Did you go to the same school also?

Amrit Acharya 45:27 No, no. So I'm from Bhubaneswar, he's from Coimbatore. And, and so we grew up differently, but we... I mean, that's the beauty of IIT Madras. Like, it's a platform for people. You know, you get the best of people from all over. I met my wife here also. Uh, so two very important people in my life I have met here. And, uh, so Srinath and I were in the same hostel, Narmada, uh, different wingmates, so we were rivals from a wing point of view. Uh, but then, uh, we did this exchange program together in Singapore, uh, and NTU, and, uh, and that's where we got really close. And, uh, like, bear in mind, all of us were like kids, you know, so we were just discovering life, discovering, uh, about, uh, each other. And, and then coincidentally, we- when we got placed, we got placed in the same company, in ITC. Now, of course, ITC is also a huge company.

Amrut 46:20 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 46:21 What are the odds? We got placed in the same division-

Amrut 46:23 Nice

Amrit Acharya 46:23 ... uh, which is the agri business division. Uh, there also there are multiple locations. We got placed in Guntur.

Amrut 46:29 Right.

Amrit Acharya 46:29 So, you know, we, in our formative years, we grew up in Guntur, where honestly speaking, there was not much to do-

Amrut 46:36 Yeah

Amrit Acharya 46:36 ... except work, and you had a limited set of people who were your batch of people who had joined, so we all became really tight. And, and, uh, uh, there's been a lot of, uh, founder alumni that have been come out of that ITC kind of upbringing. Like, in fact, one of our, uh, friends there was Rajesh, who runs BlackBuck. They've also gone public. He's from Kharagpur. Uh, but we all kind of grew up in that ecosystem, uh, where, uh, you know, uh, the work was important, and you had maybe ten, twenty friends who you could socialize.

Amrut 47:11 I always find this very fascinating when you are in a place where there's a lot of time-

Amrit Acharya 47:16 Yeah

Amrut 47:16 ... with a few set of people, and you could do anything. You could watch movies, you-

Amrit Acharya 47:21 Yeah

Amrut 47:21 ... get a drink or whatever.

Amrit Acharya 47:23 Yeah.

Amrut 47:23 And yet some people just choose to, uh, work together or talk about work or dream about building something large.

Amrit Acharya 47:31 Yeah.

Amrut 47:32 It's just fascinating.

Amrit Acharya 47:33 Yeah, it's, it, it also... Yeah, it depends. Yeah, it's interesting how these ecosystems... And I would say something that we are, we are also trying to create at Zetwerk. Zetwerk has created a very strong alumni pool. It's a very differentiated alumni pool. The people who have... Actually, I don't think at our L1 level, we have lost even one person to another company. We have lost a lot of people to want to start their own businesses, and they're very differentiated businesses, like in defense, in chemicals, in semiconductor, in uh, storage. Uh, it's a very differentiated alumni pool compared to, let's say, what would come out of a consumer company, right? And, and, uh-

Amrut 48:09 Thanks.

Amrit Acharya 48:10 And, uh, so Srinath and I met in college. Uh, we did, uh, exchange program, we did competitions together. Uh, we had mutual respect for each other. Uh, he- my mother really likes Srinath, so he- she took his number. Every time I would not pick up her phone call, she would call Srinath [chuckles] and check on me whether I'm, I'm doing okay or not. So-

Amrut 48:35 You had a campus romance, right?

Amrit Acharya 48:38 Yeah, me and my wife, we met in, uh, college.

Amrut 48:40 So that must have- those calls must have been going to Srinath. [laughing] Like, "Where is Amrit now?"

Amrit Acharya 48:45 ... awesome. I remember one time we were in, uh, Munnar, uh, our entire wing had gone. And, uh, usually I tell my mother, but this time I forgot. And, uh, because in Munnar, we had no signal, so for three days, she has been trying, trying, trying, and... I mean, as an older person now, I can empathize.

Amrut 49:04 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 49:04 But back then, I'm like, I didn't, I didn't really appreciate it, but so when I came back, I had, yeah. At one point, I got a call from Srinath: "Hey, your mom is trying to reach you." [laughing]

Amrut 49:15 [laughing] Did you egg each other to be better versions of yourselves?

Amrit Acharya 49:21 You know, we are fairly complementary, I would say. Um, like, when people ask me for advice on starting a company, my number one advice is: Don't start a company without Srinath, you know, or, or equivalent of Srinath, right? Like, and he's very, very operationally, uh, intense. Uh, he has the ability to engage in a two-hour conversation with somebody who sh- mans the shop floor and somebody who's a CEO of a large company. Like, big range of, of how he can connect with people, right? And, um, I would say he's the people magnet of the company. You know, the- he's able to attract, uh, retain, drive talent. My, my strengths are more like system thinking. Uh, you know, like thinking two years ahead, uh, trying to think of that now. I am very paranoid. Like, there's this book called Only the Paranoid Survive, written-

Amrut 50:26 Yeah

Amrit Acharya 50:26 ... by the Intel CEO, and I can really relate to that book, 'cause I'm always paranoid. Like, even if things are going well, uh, I, I completely overlook the things that are going well. I'm just immediately-- my mind is just wired, like,:"Okay, what is the next thing that can derail us, and how do I solve that today?" Right? And, and so it's a good, good, good complementarity. And, and, uh, and honestly, like, sev- like, seven years back, when I moved back from US to India, if Srinath had, for some reason, said no to start a company, I would probably not have done it.

Amrut 51:05 Very interesting.

Amrit Acharya 51:06 Um, I would have just... I had a job offer from a startup. I would have probably joined that. And, and I took the plunge because of that inherent confidence I had on him, and then the complementarity that he also saw. You know, it's, it's not one directional. And, and over a period of time, that has just become stronger. Now, we do have our disagreements all the time, and, and, uh... But we also have this weird thing where sometimes we can read, read each other's minds now. You know, it's like a work spouse, where, uh, you spend so much time. Uh, and new people who meet us for the first time, they're able to see this chemistry-

Amrut 51:45 Chemistry

Amrit Acharya 51:46 ... without us articulating it. You know, they're able to just see that there is a chemistry here, which has been just forged through time, if nothing else, you know? Like, we just spent 15 years together.

Amrut 51:57 Very interesting.

Amrit Acharya 51:57 Um, and, and, uh, and in the hard moments, that is what you rely on, because, uh, the founder journey is lonely, end of the day. Like, uh, you talk to other founders, but then nobody really can relate to the specific problems that you're going through. Um, as a CEO, there is even another layer of loneliness, which even your co-founder sometimes cannot relate to. But for 90% of the times, like, this is really an only person who can relate to... Like, luckily, I have, beyond Srinath, three other founders. We're each other's therapy group, in a way, you know? So we can just... Every Saturday we meet, we have a structured agenda that, okay, these are the things we're gonna work on, but another, another hour is just completely just unstructured, you know, ranting, empathizing, all of that, right? And, and, uh, we've been doing it for seven years now, every, every week, pretty much.

Amrut 52:54 Nice.

Amrit Acharya 52:55 And, uh, these are all, like, rituals which compound.

Amrut 52:58 Yeah. You're also married, um, do you guy- you guys have a child?

Amrit Acharya 53:02 We don't have kids yet, but we do want kids. Yeah, that's something we want next.

Amrut 53:07 Nice. Um, this sounds fantastic. I feel a little jealous. [chuckles] Um, I, I have heard of other founder pairs, Arun and Sopnel, for example-

Amrit Acharya 53:16 Yeah

Amrut 53:16 ... who are, uh, extremely co-dependent, um, like work spouses.

Amrit Acharya 53:20 Yeah.

Amrut 53:21 Very interesting. Mm. Okay, so you're back for your reunion.

Amrit Acharya 53:25 Yeah.

Amrut 53:26 Right? It's been 15 years since you left.

Amrit Acharya 53:28 Yeah.

Amrut 53:28 You've been able to achieve a lot. Uh, I'm wondering, how much of that do you trace back to your time at campus here? And also, now that you're seeing the campus, how has it changed?

Amrit Acharya 53:38 First

Amrit Acharya 53:39 of all, it's amazing to be at CFI. The-- As I walked in, you know, I saw all the cool stuff. I see a boat here, I see a Formula One car.

Amrut 53:48 That's actually a solar car.

Amrit Acharya 53:49 Oh, it's a solar car.

Amrut 53:50 With, uh-

Amrit Acharya 53:50 It looks like a boat.

Amrut 53:51 Panel opened up.

Amrit Acharya 53:53 Yeah. Anyway, all I see is potential customers. [laughing] So I hope all these companies do well, and when they need to scale, they come to us. You know, we do work with a lot of early-stage companies, uh, some of whom have become large. Like, Ather is a customer of ours also. We do work- do some work for them. But we do work with a lot of robotics companies. We do a lot of work with, like, new, new energy companies. So, you know, whoever is listening, uh, please come to us if you want to scale your manufacturing problems. Um, so it's amazing to see this DNA, uh, uh, like, at, at the... And, and, uh, CFI was started by you, so, you know, it's, it's, it's amazing thing that you brought into the world. And I think when I... I remember when, uh, when CFI was just launched, it was just a nice place to hang out, uh, you know, and, and, uh-... if you're a nerdy, engineering-focused person, you know, this is a happy place for you.

Amrut 54:55 Yeah, it is just a happy place.

Amrit Acharya 54:56 There's just, like, just motherboards lying around. There is, you know, you can do soldering, you can do whatever. And so, I think that DNA, uh, was there then, and I-- every time I come to IIT Madras, it feels like a time capsule. Yes, a lot of things have changed. There's a new building. This was not there. Uh, there's so many new apartment-type buildings that have come up. Infrastructure is more modern. But when you talk to the people, they still engage with you in the same way, you know?

Amrut 55:27 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 55:28 Uh, the, the students you meet-

Amrut 55:31 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 55:31 - they're still like, you know, wide-eyed, uh, not complacent. You know, they want to do something ambitious. Ambition is high. It's a very high ambition per square feet kind of area, right? And, and it, it, uh, it keeps you grounded whenever you come back, that, "Look, uh, you know, there is, uh, there is the DNA that you're kind of relying on." The second thing that IIT Madras is very ... I said I met my co-founder, I met my wife. You know, I've met a lot of friends here. And, and, uh, you know, I've been part of many ecosystems, IIT Madras, ITC. I was at McKinsey, I was in business school in the US, but my home is still at IIT Madras kind of ecosystem, you know. Because for the first time in our life, we chose our friends versus, you know, it being just-

Amrut 56:20 Thrusted

Amrit Acharya 56:20 ... uh, thrusted on us, right? And, and, uh, and, uh, you, you find people of such eclectic diversity here. And so, you-- whenever you think you're weird or idiosyncratic, there is somebody who will beat you at that, you know? And then there's somebody who will beat that person, you know. It's like, uh... It's the perfect, uh, long-term distribution of personalities that you can, you can find. Uh, I learned how to raise money in Saarang. Uh, we were talking about that briefly, right? So again, IIT Madras is a very interesting place where you can just explore so many different aspects of your personality, which is not just engineering, but, like, not running a business, but all those various aspects that go into like commercializing a venture, raising grants, you know, uh, raising sponsorship for Saarang. These are all uncomfortable, fundamentally, for people who are more engineering and, and, uh, who are just very comfortable with, uh, solving a math problem.

Amrut 57:29 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 57:29 Uh, learning all these extra things is, I mean, uncomfortable. And even today, it's uncomfortable for me, you know? But, but if you trace that learning curve from 15 years back, it is natural you'll get better and better over time.

Amrut 57:42 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 57:42 And IIT Madras offers a platform where if you have that interest, uh, you can really explore that part of your personality, and I would encourage everyone to do it. I'm sure these opportunities still exist. Um, so it's, it's, uh... IIT Madras, yeah, changed the arc of my life and, and, uh, I'm very grateful for it.

Amrut 58:03 Beautiful. That's just beautiful. I have only two questions left. One is, any advice you have for younger folks? I know you have a time crunch. We are in time. Don't worry about it, we, we'll hit the mark. Um, do you have any big advice to the younger folks? How can they emulate you? Any personal frameworks, any books? [chuckles]

Amrit Acharya 58:22 That's interesting. Like, I met a lot of young people, uh, recently, a lot of them from IIT Madras. I have two emotions when I meet them. One is, extremely impressive bunch of folks because of, I guess, uh, democratization of entrepreneurship, because of it's more mainstream now than it was-

Amrut 58:43 Yeah

Amrit Acharya 58:43 ... seven years, eight years back. When I first started my com- like, Zetwerk, my father was extremely concerned. Uh, I had quit McKinsey, which is, in his mind, one of the best jobs I could have had. I quit US, and then I came back to India to start what? He didn't know. So it was very confusing. So I see that has changed quite a lot in the last eight years. Um, and so that is very, like, encouraging. And you, you meet young people, I meet... And they're like: "Oh, I started a company when I was in college, in my third year, and now I'm..." I guess, Ether is the best example. It's a college startup, which is now a publicly owned company. Um, and, and that DNA is the- increasing and increasing, and it's all increasing in IIT Madras, especially, like, really hard problems. You know, like, you're, you're having people doing spacecraft, you're doing whatever, uh, complex, complex things. That's great. My worry is if we take it to the other side of the extreme, where you do it just because it's cool. Um, and I see a lot of that also. Uh, there's-- I see sometimes there is not enough depth, uh, to, uh, to the problem that they're solving because they have not spent enough time, or they're only interested in it at a superficial level. So I think beyond a point, you know, you can-- I think fake it till you make it is real. You know, we've all kind of gone through that journey. Uh, but there is that intellectual honesty that you need to complement. Uh, like, am I doing something just because it's fun, cool, interesting, it's a resume point, or is this really the purpose of my life? You know, when you frame things as the purpose of your life, it is okay to wait two years, three years, four years, five years, whatever is the right time until you're ready. Which means that you can work at another company, you can, uh, solve an interesting problem, uh, in a different kind of landscape, and take that plunge into entrepreneurship only when you're really, really ready. Because this journey is, like, hard. Like, it's hard.

Amrut 1:00:45 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 1:00:45 It's, uh... It'll take you 10 years, as I said, to even know that you're going in the right direction, broadly speaking. You'll have a lot of-... if you're lucky enough, vanity metrics along the way, which will again just delay that gratification of problem-solving. But the- it cannot, beyond a point, laws of physics apply, you know? So, so my biggest recommendation to young people would be that, yeah, if you're interested in entrepreneurship, definitely consider it, uh, but don't do it in a theoretical way. The second thing, which is, you know, it's interesting because we are listening to a podcast or-

Amrut 1:01:24 Mm

Amrit Acharya 1:01:24 ... recording a podcast. There is a lot of kind of theoretical approach to entrepreneurship, which is, you know, I've read books, I have listened to 10 founders' podcast, and I have this mental model of how to start a company or how to do certain things. But, you know, till the rubber hits the road, till you actually do things, you know, everything is a concept or a piece of paper.

Amrut 1:01:48 Mm.

Amrit Acharya 1:01:48 Right? And, and so again, I would, I don't know, good or bad reasons, we did not have this much content when we were starting the company.

Amrut 1:01:57 Yeah.

Amrit Acharya 1:01:57 So I did not, like, have a lot of content that I-

Amrut 1:02:02 Consumed

Amrit Acharya 1:02:02 ... consumed. We have some inspirations, like we are inspired by a company like Danaher, which is a, you know, industrial compounder built in the '90s, TransDigm. These are companies which have grown at 20% for 20 years. There are certain ways they've done it, so we're inspired by them, but it's not something we overintellectualized, you know? I think we just started. And, uh, once you start, that's when the real learning happens, and you have to be like first principles at every point in time. Um, so the only mental model is first principles. Um-

Amrut 1:02:37 I-

Amrit Acharya 1:02:37 ... just because somebody else did it a certain way, that there's no guarantee that it'll work for you, so.

Amrut 1:02:43 Nice. That's damn cool. Actually, that's a great point to end this podcast, but I have one request.

Amrit Acharya 1:02:48 Yeah.

Amrut 1:02:49 Um, you're

Amrut 1:02:50 from Bhubaneswar?

Amrit Acharya 1:02:50 Yes.

Amrut 1:02:51 Uh, we also had, uh, Victor, who's from Bhubaneswar.

Amrit Acharya 1:02:54 Yes. Yeah, I mean, he was, uh... We went to, uh, JEE coaching together.

Amrut 1:02:58 Is it?

Amrit Acharya 1:02:58 Yeah. [chuckles]

Amrut 1:02:59 Amazing. I want you to give a shout-out to people from Bhubaneswar. Uh, I, I feel like it's... I'm also from Bhubaneswar. I feel like it's a little underrepresented in the entrepreneurship space. Um, yeah. They should join-

Amrit Acharya 1:03:12 More, more power to, to us. [chuckles]

Amrut 1:03:15 More power to us. [chuckles] Okay, man.

Amrit Acharya 1:03:18 Thank you.

Amrut 1:03:18 Thank you so much, Amrit. Uh, and, uh, good luck with your reunion-

Amrit Acharya 1:03:22 Yeah

Amrut 1:03:22 ... and good luck with your-

Amrit Acharya 1:03:24 Thanks

Amrut 1:03:24 ... IPO whenever it comes.

Amrit Acharya 1:03:25 Thank you.

Amrut 1:03:27 See you all. Please, if you like this podcast, like, share, subscribe, follow Zetwerk's journey on LinkedIn or wherever you want to follow their journey. Uh, they're always in the newspaper, so you can do that there too.