How Zetwerk’s home-built tech keeps its thousands factories in sync
From Coimbatore to California, Zetwerk’s software runs India’s factories like a single machine.
Manufacturing platform Zetwerk Manufacturing Businesses Pvt Ltd expects to generate revenue of Rs 16,000 crore-17,000 crore this year, according to Co-founder and CEO Amrit Acharya.
Speaking at TechSparks 2025, YourStory's flagship conference in Bengaluru, Acharya noted that about a third of the company's revenue comes from the United States, with the remaining coming from its India operations.
When Zetwerk started, the founders quickly realised that existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems were not effective for what they wanted to do: coordinate production across thousands of small factories scattered around India.
A traditional ERP assumes one location, one set of machines, one flow of material. Zetwerk’s business was the opposite—10,000 MSMEs working on 10 million to 15 million parts a month.
“Imagine when you have one large factory, you need an ERP,” said Srinath Ramakkrushnan, Co-founder and COO. “But when you’re doing distributed manufacturing, you cannot do that without a strong technology platform.”
Ramakkrushnan explained that each order could include dozens of engineering drawings, and all the drawings would not be made by one single shop. Each drawing could be executed by different suppliers. Managing that kind of fragmentation—tracking inventory, costs, production planning, and inspections for every individual part—was impossible with off-the-shelf software.
“Besides traditional ERP, we could not find anything customised for our application,” he said. “So we decided to build all of this tech in-house.”
That decision turned into a full operating system for distributed manufacturing. Zetwerk’s stack ingests customers’ AutoCAD drawings, converts them into production tasks, assigns them to the most suitable suppliers, and tracks progress in real time.
The system links supplier audits (machine capabilities, certifications, defect history) with logistics and raw-material procurement, effectively turning a loose network of workshops into one virtual factory.
Over time, this architecture has become more intelligent. The company has processed close to a billion AutoCAD files, and now trains its own language-vision models to match new drawings to past ones, identifying the right vendor, price, and quality controls instantly.
"What would have taken us 18 months, we're able to do it in a month," Acharya said.
The payoff is visible—what the founders call “transparency, visibility, and traceability.” An industrial customer in Germany can see which factory in Coimbatore is making their part, how far it is through machining, and when it will ship. The entire supply chain behaves like software: modular, version-controlled, and auditable.
The company’s edge also comes from owning key inputs. Raw materials account for as much as 75% of a typical order’s cost, and smaller suppliers often lose a month securing them. Zetwerk now buys and supplies steel, copper, and other materials upfront.
“We don’t make much money off that,” Acharya said. “But what we save is 30 days of production.”
The company's largest segment is energy and power components, serving solar developers, data centre operators, and equipment makers including Siemens and Schneider Electric. These customers prioritise speed over cost. When India faced a 50% tariff, Zetwerk passed the entire increase to customers without losing business.
"Our customers are really time sensitive and not price sensitive," Acharya said. Reducing delivery time by six months means six months of additional revenue for clients.
Zetwerk has signed 20 five-year contracts worth nearly $1 billion in committed spend. The company works with Fortune 500 clients in India and globally, maintains supplier relationships across Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, Germany, Spain, Mexico, and the US, and operates its own facilities for 20% of production while outsourcing 80%.
