Zetwerk buys back $8.3 million ESOPs

Business-to-business custom manufacturing startup Zetwerk said on March 24 that its investors have bought back shares from early employees across 3 rounds - totalling to $8.3 million (Rs 60.92 crore), giving many early employees a financial windfall.

While it didn’t disclose the exact number of employees who benefited from the buyback, all eligible employees exercised their options. Employees shares get vested (eligible for buyback) after they spend one year with the company. Three-year-old Zetwek said that all the investors who invested in the Series D- including Lightspeed and Sequoia India, Accel, Greenoaks Capital and Kae Capital bought back the shares. It employs about 400 people currently.

“Zetwerk is building a company for the future, and we believe that employees are a crucial part of the journey. The aggressive growth in the past two years reflects the role played by Zetwerk employees, some of whom chose to be a part of the journey when the company existed only on paper. For us, building a strong culture that recognizes the contribution of employees is extremely important, and we plan to carry out this exercise even in the future as we scale up our business,” said Amrit Acharya, CEO & Co-founder, Zetwerk Manufacturing.

Founded in 2018 by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras alumni Acharya, Srinath Ramakkrushnan, Rahul Sharma and Vishal Chaudhary, Zetwerk procures manufacturing services such as fabrication, machining, casting and forging from small and medium companies and connects them to mid-to-large OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and engineering, procurement and construction firms- earlier in India and South-East Asia and now in North America as well.

The buyers include Jindal, BGR Energy, Embassy Group, Sterling & Wilson and Fidelity Contracts, who want to procure custom products and machine parts that are not available off-the-shelf.

For years, ESOPs have been a rare source of wealth-creation at startups due to lack of exits but over the last 18 months, many firms have gone for buybacks, rewarding employee loyalty. These include Unacademy, Zerodha, Cars24 and Urban Company and Razorpay.