Zetwerk, an Indian B2B marketplace for manufacturing items, raises $21 million

Zetwerk, an Indian business-to-business marketplace for manufacturing items, has raised $21 million in a new financing round as it looks to scale its operations in the nation and help local businesses find customers overseas.

San Francisco-based investment firm Greenoaks led the two-year-old Indian startup’s Series C financing round. Existing investors Accel, Kae Capital, Lightspeed and Sequoia Capital India also participated in the round, which brings Zetwerk’s to-date raise to $62 million.

Founded by Amrit Acharya, Srinath Ramakkrushnan, Rahul Sharma and Vishal Chaudhary in 2018, Zetwerk connects OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and EPC (engineering procurement construction) customers with manufacturing small-businesses and enterprises.

Unlike the more typical e-commerce firms, Zetwerk sells goods such as parts of a crane, doors, chassis of different machines and ladders. The startup operates to serve customers in fabrication, machining, casting and forging businesses.

These are all custom-made products. “Nobody has a stock of such inventories. You get the order, you find manufacturers and workshops that make them. Our customers are companies that are in the business of building infrastructure,” said Acharya, who serves as Zetwerk’s chief executive.

“We index these small workshops and understand the kinds of products they have built before. These indexes help bigger companies discover and work with them,” he added. Once a firm has placed an order, Zetwerk allows them to track the progress of manufacturing and then its shipping. In this line of business, this “hand-holding” is crucial as manufacturing and shipping of these items typically take more than two to three months.

Currently, Zetwerk works with more than 150 enterprises and 2,500 small and medium-sized businesses, it told TechCrunch. The startup delivers more than 30,000 parts each month, up 100% since December last year, and has enabled several manufacturers in India to discover clients overseas.

“Zetwerk is bringing Indian manufacturing to the global stage, and I’m proud to be part of their story,” said Prayank Swaroop of Accel.

Zetwerk has developed “unique software to enable an enormous global manufacturing marketplace connecting OEMs and EPCs with industrial suppliers,” said Neil Shah of Greenoaks Capital.

“Increasingly, companies are looking to diversify their supply chain globally and Zetwerk’s platform allows them to identify and collaborate with supplier partners to deliver projects on-time and with high quality. We are thrilled to continue to partner with the Zetwerk team,” he said.

Manufacturing contributes to 14% of India’s GDP, but the nation lacks a supporting ecosystem to execute projects more efficiently, said Acharya. The startup will deploy the fresh capital to fund its international expansion and launch new categories, he said.

Commenting on how the coronavirus pandemic has impacted Zetwerk, Acharya told TechCrunch that the startup works across multiple industries, some of which are still growing. “Overall, we are doing well,” he said.