How Zetwerk's founders raised a unicorn in 3 years! | Amrit Acharya

[00:02:13] From 20 People to a Billion Dollar Company: A walk-through of the journey

[00:09:31] What Allowed Zetwerk to Scale: Software or other factors?

[00:15:08] The Zetwerk Model: Can someone else also build this system?

[00:18:48] Amrit as an Engineer: His journey after IIT

[00:21:11] Amrit’s Co-Founders: Their backgrounds and his business model

[00:30:24] Problem Solving as a Creative Exercise: How much of it still happens in Zetwerk?

[00:34:56] China +1 and Aatmanirbharta: Did Amrit see it coming?

[00:37:44] The Funding Journey: What has it been like?

[00:41:20] Future Plans for Zetwerk: Will they go Public?

[00:45:19] His Co-Founder Srinath Ramakkrushnan: Their history and equation with each other

[00:53:38] Being back at IIT Madras: How has the campus changed since he was a student?

[00:58:21] Amrit’s Advice to Younger Founders: Book and Framework recommendations

[01:02:58] Closing Thoughts: Shoutout to Bhubaneswar

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[00:00:31] IIT Madras

[00:01:34] The episode is being shot at the Centre For Innovation in IIT Madras.

[00:46:01] Amrit and his co-founder Srinath did an exchange program at NTU, Singapore together

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[00:21:13] Srinath Ramakkrushnan is Amrit’s co-founder at Zetwerk and was part of the same batch at IIT Madras

[00:29:30] Josh Foulger is the President of Zetwerk’s electronic business 

[00:44:32] Tarun Mehta, the founder of Ather, went public with his company earlier last year.

[00:46:54] Rajesh Yabaji, the founder of Blackbuck, was Amrit and Srinath’s friend at ITC.

[00:53:15] Amrut mentions that Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain have a similar equation with each other like Amrit and Srinath.

[01:02:53] Amrut mentions other Podcast guests like Victor Senapaty who were also from Bhubaneswar

[00:02:35] Companies like Siemens, Schneider Electric, and General Electric are Zetwerk’s clients.

[00:06:28] HMT set up a manufacturing hub in Pinea, Bengaluru and BHEL set up a fabrication hub in Trichy, Tamil Nadu.

[00:06:50] Tata built a similar hub in Jamshedpur.

[00:10:48] L&T was a company that Amrit reached out to in the initial software selling phase

[00:17:48] Amrit started his career at ITC and Amrut started at Unilever

[00:19:37] Winning the Junkyard Wars in his second year got Amrit an internship at Bosch

[00:25:54] Companies like OpenAI and Google face a 4 year backlog for transformers to power data centres. 

[00:26:50] CG Power and Hitachi are Tier 1 transformer companies

[00:27:40] Zetwerk has now partnered with Jaybee Industries for manufacturing the transformer core for their transformer business

[00:29:10] Zetwerk’s US Business CEO used to work at Precision Castparts Corp

[00:34:32] India is the largest exporter of Apple’s iPhone

[00:36:48] Motherson would be a competitor for Zetwerk in the Auto space

[00:39:21] Sequoia, Accel, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures are some of Zetwerk’s investors

[00:40:55] During their seed money round, Zetwerk didn’t have clear answers to questions like Are you the Uber or Airbnb of India?

[00:54:09] Ather Energy is also one of Zetwerk’s customers

[00:58:50] Amrit quit McKinsey & Co and came back to India to start Zetwerk

[01:02:08] Amrit mentions Danaher as one of their inspirations. 

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[00:29:41] Amrut mentions an anime called SpyxFamily where the protagonist is named Foulger. (The protagonist is actually named Forger)

[00:50:26] Amrit mentions that he really relates to a book called Only the Paranoid Survive 

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[00:02:31] MaaS (Manufacturing as a Service) is a digital model where companies access shared, on-demand manufacturing resources (like machinery, expertise, and facilities) through online platforms, much like cloud computing, allowing them to outsource production without owning assets, leading to greater flexibility, lower costs, faster time-to-market, and focus on core business

[00:06:02] SME stands for Small and Medium Enterprises, referring to businesses with limited employees, revenue, or assets compared to large corporations, playing a vital role in job creation and economic growth.

[00:11:31] CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) is a financial metric showing the average yearly growth rate of an investment over a specific period, assuming profits are reinvested. It smooths out volatility, giving a clearer picture of performance than simple averages, and is calculated using the formula: CAGR = ((Ending Value / Beginning Value)^(1/Number of Years)) - 1. 

[00:15:59] Murphy’s Law is a popular adage stating, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” often used humorously or pessimistically to explain frustrating, unexpected failures, though it is not a scientific law but a principle of probability and human perception.

[00:36:26] Sunrise Industries refers to industries like Solar, Wind, EV, and Precision Manufacturing