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Meet the man who was rejected 36 times before building a 25,000 CR company. 1. After graduating from IIT Madras and Haas School of Business, Amrit Acharya had a cushy consulting job with McKinsey in the US. But he still wanted to tackle inefficiencies in India's manufacturing sector. He made an overnight decision, packed two suitcases, and booked a flight back to India to solve this. 🙌 2. He knew manufacturing was expensive for small companies and built an end-to-end contract manufacturing marketplace with reliable suppliers. Alongside his three IIT friends, he started a company. In May 2018, Zetwerk was born. 🚀 3. Starting from steel pipes to aircraft engine components in the infrastructure and energy space, Zetwerk had too many challenges. The absence of a copycat business model in the US and an operationally heavy requirement had made Amrit hear no from 36 investors. He had to do something. 🤔 4. He kept scaling both sides—on the Demand side, he worked with mid-to-large OEM companies from India and Southeast Asia, and on the supply side, with SMEs like RN fabricators and GM Engineers. By 2019, it scaled to 500 supply partners and a monthly delivery capacity of 15K megatons with over 200 projects. And magic happened. 🪄 5. Zetwerk raised 64 CR in Series A from Accel and Sequoia India. With funds, it scaled to 1500 supply partners and 15,000 fabrication, machining, casting and forging parts monthly in just nine months. In December 2019, it raised 225 CR from Lightspeed and Greenoaks. 💰 6. Zetwerk primarily earned from transaction fees but had raked up just 16 CR until now. As Amrit was finding solutions, COVID-19 happened. The supply chain froze; nobody wanted to import from China, and the Indian government focused on "Make in India." Zetwerk's moment had come. 👇 7. Operating revenue jumped from 16 CR in FY19 to 321.93 CR as it expanded from Industrial engineering to apparel, consumer electronics, and kitchen products. By Aug 2021, it had zoomed to a revenue of 835.5 CR and raised 1100 CR, led by D1 at a valuation of 9,750 CR. It had become a unicorn and profitable at the same time. 🦄 8. Zetwerk kept scaling with precision manufacturing and reached a monster revenue of 4961 CR by 2022. It had raised 1585 CR in its Series E funding and had become a 21,000 CR company. 📈 9. Today, Zetwerk manages over 10,000 suppliers and 1,000 enterprise clients. With a revenue of 14,596.8 CR, it continues to serve over 2000 clients in 20 countries and manufacture 9 million parts. 💪 ➡️ Who would have thought that after coming to India overnight and receiving over 36 rejections from investors, Amrit Acharya would build a 25,000 CR company? 🙏