Bengaluru-based Zetwerk Manufacturing Businesses Pvt. Ltd, which operates a business-to-business manufacturing services marketplace, has raised $21 million (about Rs 157.17 crore) in a Series C funding round.
The round was led by San Francisco-based Greenoaks Capital, Zetwerk said in a statement. Other participants include existing backers Accel, Kae Capital, Lightspeed and Sequoia Capital India.
The fundraising exercise takes the total capital raised by Zetwerk so far to $62 million.
Zetwerk was set up in 2018 by Amrit Acharya and Srinath Ramakkrushnan. It connects mid-to-large original equipment manufacturers from India and Southeast Asia who need custom products and machine parts with firms that can satisfy the demand.
The company plans to use the fresh capital to scale its operations in India as well as help local businesses find overseas customers.
Its clients function in infrastructure segments such as fabrication, machining, casting, and forging. “We index these small workshops and understand the kinds of products they have built before,” Acharya said. “These indexes help bigger companies discover and work with them.”
The Series C round comes just months after the company raised around $2.24 million in funding from venture debt firm InnoVen Capital in January. That development took place just weeks after it raised $32 million in its Series B funding round from investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Greenoaks Capital.
In March last year, it raised $9 million as part of its Series A round from venture capital firms Sequoia India, Accel and Kae Capital. Prior to this, the company raised $1.2 million in a seed round in August 2018 from Kae Capital and Sequoia India, according to data available with VCCEdge, the research platform of Mosaic Digital.
B2B-focussed startups
Zetwerk is by no means the first B2B startup to secure a large cheque from investors at regular intervals. Companies operating in the sphere have become more attractive to firms because of their technological underpinnings and larger attempts to organise many parts of the larger Indian economy.
In December last year, Tiger Global led a $20 million Series A funding round in Infra.Market, a marketplace for real estate and construction materials. Accel and Nexus Venture Partners also participated in the round. Infra.Market had raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round from Accel in August.
In September last year, Udaan raised around $300 million in its Series D funding round from investors including Altimeter Capital and Footpath Ventures. The month before, ShopKirana E-Trading Pvt. Ltd raised around $10 million in a funding round led by Info Edge (India) Ltd, which owns portals including job site Naukri.com.