S6 Ep143: Digitizing India's Manufacturing with Sonam Motwani of Karkhana.io

TRANSFIN. LongShorts with Nikhil Arora and Sharath Toopran

We spoke with Sonam Motwani, CEO of Karkhana.io, a custom manufacturing platform helping OEMs source the right MSME manufacturing suppliers and high-quality components for their projects.
Karkhana.io has emerged as a new age tech-enabled managed marketplace, providing a wide range of manufacturing services catering to the needs of businesses for small to large volume production, product assembly, product localization, and contract manufacturing.
Their capabilities include CNC Machining, Injection Moulding, Vacuum Casting, Forging, Electronics Integrations, Casting, 3D Printing, and more.
Backed by Vertex Ventures and Aureolis Ventures, and with a track record of manufacturing over 2.5 million components for more than 300 customers all through a network of 400+ suppliers, Sonam and Karkhana.io have set ambitious goals for themselves with the company aspiring to achieve a topline of INR1,500cr ($187.5m) by FY2026.
Listen in to this fascinating chat where we touch upon the structural challenges around "custom-built highly engineered" manufacturing in India coupled with wider issues around fragmentation, low state of digitization in the ecosystem at large, along with the perspective needed by institutional investors looking to take exposure to this space.
Hope you enjoy this TRANSFIN. Podcast with Nikhil Arora and Sharath Toopran, where we converse with entrepreneurs and business operators running successful startups, profitable SMEs and family promoted firms on one end, and top investment professionals representing VC/PE/credit funds on the other.
The objective is to bring out an "actionable" perspective converging the world of business and investing.
If you're a founder and if you'd like us to drill down your model, feel free to drop us a line at [email protected]