Manasa Manjunath

I was 29 when we started Zetwerk. My wife Sharanya and I had just returned from the US to build our lives in India. Last month, we welcomed our daughter. Last week, we took the company public. It is yet to sink in. When I moved back, my father, a professor, was sceptical. I had walked away from the traditional Indian dream of a job abroad. But our story is also that of today's India, where my cofounders and I, 20-somethings from small towns, without family connections, can raise capital, build a business, take it global and take it public, all within a decade. The world today is on the cusp of enormous progress: defence modernisation, energy transition, space exploration and AI buildout. Much of this progress faces a common bottleneck: building physical things in the real world. But the manufacturing systems of the past won't build the future. Manufacturing must modernise to catch up with the industries it serves. At Zetwerk, we always believed there is enough depth in Indian manufacturing whether it is within the small workshop in Peenya which is great at tooling or it is in the new plants we have set up to drive scaled production. Our approach combines real-world engineering with a digital stack to unify ~7000 suppliers, 25+ owned facilities, 1000+ customers and 3000+ employees into a single layer that operates with the predictability of a world-class factory, standardising quality and delivery. We call it the Universal Factory. Our ambition is to build a world-class industrial institution bringing together two distinct worlds: software and hardware. Think of your day today. You may have made coffee, worn headphones, taken the metro or a flight, or opened your laptop. There is a little bit of Zetwerk in all of these. We want our customers placing complex, multimillion-dollar orders to have an experience that is "boringly predictable" - simple, transparent and reliable. We have over ₹15,900 crore in revenue, more than 80% repeat customers and a manufacturing order book of ₹13,000 crore. We've come a long way, but also have a long way to go. On IPO day, my father stood beside me as we rang the bell at the National Stock Exchange. He is not sceptical any more :) Someone wise once said “You make your own reality. And once you've done it, everyone's of the opinion it was all so obvious”. That is how the future works. Before something transformative exists, people call it improbable. Afterwards, they call it inevitable. This is the spirit in which we are building Zetwerk: with a relentless commitment to the future. Great industrial institutions that came before us, like GE, L&T and Tata, helped make the modern world possible. Today, Indian manufacturing is having its moment, and we intend to build what comes next. A big thank you to our investors, customers, employees, their families, our bankers and partners who helped us get here. We are committed to building a world-class industrial institution out of India.