Global retailers are the essential part of our growth story
Zetwerk Manufacturing Businesses Pvt Ltd is the largest global manufacturing network for custom manufacturing that helps transform digital designs into physical manifestations. It offers manufacturing solutions across a diverse range of products, including apparel, for small businesses and Fortune 500 companies alike. Associate Director Aseem Chitkara tells Fibre2Fashion how the company is helping international brands to source more from India.
Over the last few years, how many global fashion retailers have moved their supply chains to India via Zetwerk? What is their feedback?
In the last one year, over 70 international brands have already started sourcing from Zetwerk. Most of them had little or no exposure to the Indian market earlier.
Most of these buyers are working along with us on a month-to-month basis and are regularly increasing their product portfolio. We have now managed to grow their Indian sourcing to double digits from low single digit numbers and this shows their confidence in us and their endeavour to maintain and build long-term relationship with Zetwerk.
How did the idea of setting up a global manufacturing network strike?
Started in 2018 by Amrit Acharya (Co-founder & CEO), Srinath Ramakkrushnan (Co-founder & COO), Rahul Sharma (Co-founder) and Vishal Chaudhary (Co-founder), the genesis of Zetwerk emanated from the founders’ own experience of navigating the gaps and challenges within the manufacturing ecosystem.
In the B2B manufacturing industry the transactions are carried out over a range of months, and there is no organised feedback system in place to tackle these challenges. Hence, to make things easier in the B2B supply chain, Zetwerk came up with a software that enables you to interact with suppliers. Many prominent firms were reluctant to take up this service because they had to convince their top brass who operated out of foreign offices. They, however, asked us if they could use the software’s abilities to find new suppliers.
This was where Zetwerk came up with its first pivot. Instead of offering a self-service product like a software, Zetwerk decided to go deeper and provide an entire marketplace. We worked on that for six months, and finally established a robust network that connected the suppliers and businesses. Hence, if a firm came to this network, it would help them find the right supplier out of the thousands listed on the platform. There are many variables to consider — the price, the transportation distance, manufacturability, the extent of the supplier's capabilities. For this matchmaking, Zetwerk charges a small marketplace commission.
By January 2019, though Zetwerk was getting many orders, not many orders were delivered because suppliers in India lacked the ecosystem to support fulfilment. We soon realised that customers, specifically in India, wanted us to go one level deeper and do all of this work for them (provide them with a complete solution). Thus, Zetwerk would take the order, locate the suppliers, and make sure the product is delivered on time. This, with complete visibility as to what’s happening on a day-to-day basis. When Zetwerk got this comprehensive model up and running, its business took off.
Zetwerk became a unicorn within three years after receiving seed funding in August 2018. What all helped the company in gaining unicorn status?
Zetwerk offers customers access to a wide range of manufacturing capabilities, including metal fabrication, CNC machining, 3D printing and aluminium die castings, across thousands of manufacturing partners. These capabilities serve a diverse set of industries ranging from traditional ones such as Oil & Gas, Energy, Infrastructure, Aerospace, Apparel to modern ones such as Renewables, Electric Vehicles, Consumer Electronics, and Space.
Zetwerk has helped relocate the manufacturing requirements of over 100 Western companies to India, across industrial and consumer products.
Zetwerk has brought many layers to manufacturing OS, like work-in-progress photos, to provide as much transparency as possible, thereby unifying the previously fragmented manufacturing ecosystem in India. Zetwerk enables creators to keep on creating and manufacturers to keep on producing without thinking about the gap between the two.
On the demand side, we work with large corporations that typically focus on industrial projects. We are helping these designers convert their vision into reality. Through our proprietary tools and technology and in-house manufacturing OS, we can give them a real-time status report of the completion of their work.
Zetwerk has essentially built a marketplace for the manufacturing industry and become a profitable digital manufacturing unicorn in just three years.
In the present scenario where global supply chains are rapidly changing, how can Zetwerk help enterprises navigate the shift to digital manufacturing?
Zetwerk has always considered technology as the backbone to grow the business. Zetwerk believes in today’s rapid supply chain requirements and complex supplier and customer matrix technology can play a pivotal role in growing and establishing the business.
Zetwerk is already working on a digital trading platform, specifically for apparel and its first version can roll out as early as May end. This platform will help a) showcase extensive fabric and garment collection available with Zetwerk, b) will help brands finalise their products in less than two weeks instead of six weeks, and c) will help brands finetune the product price equation across product categories.
Does Zetwerk also offer working capital to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the textile and apparel sector? How is the amount decided? What are the terms and conditions?
Zetwerk is mainly a supply chain solution provider across the textiles product value chain. We are a platform where suppliers and customers can interact with each other to find out their product needs at the right price and right delivery.
We give solutions according to the needs and the main endeavour is to integrate the business and financial models to have a win-win situation for all stakeholders.
As the world’s largest custom manufacturing platform, what all services does your company provide to an existing fabric or apparel manufacturer?
Zetwerk started its Apparels division a year back and has expanded across the value chain. In one year, Zetwerk has expanded its portfolio from Design to Delivery, FOB manufacturing and Raw Material Trading.
A) Design to Delivery (D2D). We have one of the most experienced design teams at Zetwerk. Zetwerk D2D team is working with few of the most premium brands and is delivering complete design to delivery solutions. In the complete process D2D team conceptualises the collection, defines the product categories, designs the complete collection of all the product categories and get it delivered at the right price value equation to the brands.
B) FOB Manufacturing. Zetwerk FOB team is working regularly with all the major garments brands to deliver the right products as per the specifications. This includes the brands in mid-to luxury, premium and upper middle segments across the product categories like shirtings, knits and denims.
C) Trading Solutions. We also have a Fabric, Yarn and Fibre solutions team which helps the garment, fabric and yarn manufacturers to have the right products across the value chain at the right price points according to their specific needs.
How does Zetwerk help bridge the gap between fashion brands and suppliers?
To stay ahead of the competition today, fashion brands continuously look forward to a) right products at right price points in reference to their customer segment, and b) innovation in their product categories to stay ahead of competitors.
Zetwerk today is already associated with an almost complete supplier base across all product categories. We as a team understand the needs of the brands and with a deeper understanding of each supplier strength capabilities of their product categories Zetwerk suggests the brands with multiple options of the fabrics which can create value for their customer at the price point.
As the metrics available for any brand are much larger from suppliers as well as product collection, they can select the right product price value equation for their segments.
Tell us about the warehousing facilities that are provided to the textile/apparel sector by your company.
Zetwerk Apparels division is a management solution provider across the textiles supply chain and connects customers and suppliers.
All Design to Delivery and FOB orders are outsourced completely and directly shipped to the customers from the manufacturing units. We do not hold any inventory and thus do not have any warehouse.
How is the response to the Zetwerk Quality Certificate (ZQC)? Why should companies opt for this certificate?
Quality is at the core of Zetwerk’s singular and streamlined manufacturing network and Zetwerk Quality Certificate or ZQC means that on-site Quality Assurance teams ensures that every production part is inspected and meets requirements before dispatch.
Be it systems, people, process or technology, everything moves in one gear to deliver 100 per cent certified quality for every project and every customer.
- Zetwerk is ISO 9001:2015 and AS9100D aerospace quality certified.
- Zetwerk suppliers’ plants are IATF 16949:2016 automotive quality certified and ISO 13485:2016 medical quality certified.
- Zetwerk has global quality expertise in FMEA, APQP, PPAP, SPC, MSA and supports Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) level requirements.
- Zetwerk is also Environmental Management System ISO14001:2015 certified and Occupational Health & Safety Management System ISO 45001:2018 certified.
Please explain the step-by-step process as to how Zetwerk can help global retailers in sourcing fabric from India.
Global retailers are the essential part of our growth story. In the last one year we have expanded our bandwidth multi-fold to focus and grow in this particular segment.
- Zetwerk in the last one year has fully integrated with the international brands’ manufacturers who are supplying regularly to the US and Europe.
- Along with building relationships with garment manufacturers of international brands, Zetwerk parallelly has built up a strong relationship with major fabric manufacturers across product categories like denims, shirtings, and bottom weights.
- We have been a solution provider to the garment manufacturers for international brands for almost a year. From the last six months we have started interacting with the international brands to understand the right need and give them an apt solution as per their requirement.
- In a step forward in the next couple of months we will be opening our own liaisoning offices in the US and Europe and will help the international brands to source the fabric and garment more effectively. Being available for the international brands at the right time at their place will help source the right product at the right price points and quicker delivery of the products.
- We are able to showcase extensive Indian capabilities and developments which international buyers would not have seen as a one-stop offer before. This includes fabrics, garments, special finishes and washes.
How can companies like Zetwerk help in reducing carbon emissions?
Zetwerk takes a buffet of energy conservation measures in its direct and indirect manufacturing set-ups like using energy-efficient machines. In our direct factories, we use energy efficient machines to consume very less energy. Across our supply chain, we continuously do audits and create awareness and training programmes for energy conservation.
We are currently executing up to 400 MW of solar projects in bid to increase the country's renewable energy generation capacity and achieve the dream of creating 100 GW of renewable energy.
What is Manufacturing OS?
Zetwerk’s technology and products are sector-agnostic and can be deployed across industries. Over the last four years, Zetwerk has built a strong technology-driven supply chain to deliver high quality manufacturing of various industrial and consumer products at highly competitive costs and lead times. Zetwerk’s in-house Manufacturing Operating System software, ZISO, enables digital selection of supply, pricing recommendations, digital repository of engineering designs, real-time tracking of manufacturing across various stages, visual updates of products getting made, seamless communication across stakeholders and quality assurance of the final product getting shipped. Our software-led approach unifies various stakeholders in the manufacturing universe to collaborate to deliver the products we see around us and we love.
Our customers have end to end visibility on any given project from PO to final delivery of the product and we are strengthening those capabilities to ensure the seamless, real-time flow of information. There are specific asks from every customer that need a more personalised experience and for which we are looking at building certain capabilities in-house. A major share of our focus going forward would be to strengthen our technology capabilities. Following are the first (focus) in the industry feature of Zetwerk’s software:
- Digital production planning and capacity allocation
- Digital product management
- Digital quality assurance plans
- Digitised quality control and field inspections
How has your experience been with using Fibre2Fashion’s market intelligence tool TexPro?
Fibre2Fashion has always been in the forefront of breaking the barriers in using technology to provide solutions to the complete textiles and apparel industry.
TexPro is indeed an advanced tool for the industry and with almost live data it is indeed a great tool to take complex decisions.
With regular price updates across commodities, country profiling and regular updates on news and events, it gives us the complete outlook of the industry and helps keep the industry abreast of the latest happenings.
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