Vedant Awasthi

Founder @ AICAN | Building AI Systems for MSME Factories | 400+ manufacturers worked with | Sharing Real Factory Insights |

15+ Years on the Factory floor

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

This is big: all access to Mythos and Fable AI models disabled for everyone outside America.

First thoughts:

1. Technology is the ultimate weapon. National sovereignty, national security, all of it is now about technology.

2. Globalization is dead and Bharat must find her own way ahead.

We must keep these two ideas in mind.

What can our government do right now? Ensure that orgs in India embrace smaller models, both Indian and Chinese open source ones. With a bit of effort, we can make them work. Anyway, why pay money to people who don't even want to sell to you?

We must deepen our R&D. Sarvam has been on it and we have been on it but remember that the latest models cost not only huge GPU budgets to train, the GPUs themselves are restricted. So we can't afford the scale of money (of the order of $100+ billion to even get in the game!) and even if we could come up with the money, we can't get all the GPUs. I would not like to ask the government to fund tens of billions of dollars on this anyway - the money has far better uses.

Zoho has been pursuing alternative R&D approaches that are far, far less expensive but by its nature cutting edge R&D takes time and we are patient. I am confident we will get there.

Any remaining people in India who have delusions about globalization should wake up now.

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

You can see it everywhere.

People aren't implementing AI because they have a plan.

They're implementing AI because they're afraid competitors might.

Fear creates bad decisions.

The companies winning with AI usually start small:
One workflow.
One team.
One problem.
Then scale.

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

Most companies don't have an AI strategy.
They have an AI anxiety problem.

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

One thing I've noticed in many Indian MSMEs:

The problem isn't lack of opportunity.

It's fear of reinvestment.

A factory has a good year.
Cash starts coming in.

And immediately the discussions begin:
• Buy land
• Buy gold
• Buy another property
• Build another floor

Very little goes back into:
• systems
• technology
• process improvement
• capability building

And I understand why.

Physical assets feel safe.
They're visible.
They're tangible.

But here's the irony:

The businesses that grow the fastest often invest in things you can't see.
Better planning.
Better visibility.
Better execution.
Better systems.

The biggest difference between a ₹20 crore factory and a ₹200 crore factory is rarely machinery.

It's usually reinvestment behaviour.
One thinks:
"How do I protect this?"

The other thinks:
"How do I multiply this?"

Where do you think MSMEs should invest more aggressively today?

[Maahir Panchal @maahirpanchal]

Manufacturing done right can employ 10x what the IT industry employees at peak today.

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

Indian manufacturers are a different breed 😂

Always expecting the worst.
Always preparing for the worst.
And somehow still optimistic.
Their vocabulary alone deserves a dictionary:
"Jugaad ho jayega."
"Material raste mein hai."
"Machine thoda mood mein nahi hai."
"Customer ko samjha lenge."
"Kal pakka dispatch hai."

Honestly, after handling vendors, customers, labor, inspectors, cash flow, breakdowns and politics daily...

Most factory owners could become excellent politicians.

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

In 1983, India imported bicycles.
Today, India exports them to the world.

A big reason for that is one man:

Om Prakash Munjal.

But this isn't really a story about bicycles.
It's a story about consistency.

When the Munjal brothers started their business after Partition, they didn't have factories.
They didn't have capital.
They didn't have investors.
What they had was a small workshop making bicycle components.
That's it.
No grand vision deck.
No startup ecosystem.
No venture capital.
Just manufacturing.
In the early days, O.P. Munjal had a simple philosophy:
"If you promise delivery on Monday, deliver on Monday."

Sounds obvious.
But in manufacturing, reliability is a superpower.
Especially in a country where delays were considered normal.
While competitors focused on selling more,
Hero focused on something different:

Trust.
Dealers trusted them.
Suppliers trusted them.
Customers trusted them.
And over time, trust became a competitive advantage.
Most founders underestimate how powerful this is.
Everyone wants:
• Better marketing
• Better branding
• Better sales
Very few obsess over reliability.

But reliability compounds.
A dealer who trusts you places larger orders.
A supplier who trusts you gives better credit.
A customer who trusts you stays longer.
Over decades, these small advantages become massive.
Hero didn't become the world's largest bicycle manufacturer because it built the most advanced bicycle.
It became the largest because it built one of the most dependable manufacturing systems.

Day after day.
Year after year.
Decade after decade.
That's the part of manufacturing nobody talks about.

The magic isn't in breakthrough moments.
It's in boring consistency.
Producing quality repeatedly.
Delivering on time repeatedly.
Keeping commitments repeatedly.

Today, many MSMEs are chasing AI, automation, and digital transformation.
And they should.
But none of those replace the fundamental manufacturing principle that built companies like Hero:
Do what you said you would do.
Every single time.
A simple question for factory owners:

Would your customers describe your business as innovative...
or dependable?
Because in manufacturing, the second answer is often worth far more.

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

The world spent 20 years rewarding pure software.

Now AI is pushing value back into the physical world.

Robotics. Manufacturing. Energy. Defense. Logistics.

The next generation of founders will need to understand reality, not just screens.

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

The future belongs to people who understand both atoms and bits.

Not just software.
Not just hardware.

Both.

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

The future belongs to people who understand both atoms and bits.

Not just software.
Not just hardware.

Both.

[Nihal Shetty @Shetty_nhl]

Walked into a hardware startup. The reception table is a transformer. The wall behind it is every PCB they’ve ever made.

No mission statement needed!

[Chandra R. Srikanth @chandrarsrikant]

🚨Precision manufacturing startup Ethereal Machines has closed a $28.5 million Series B round led by Avataar Ventures, with participation from Peak XV Partners, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, and Blume Ventures, as it seeks to expand manufacturing capacity and strengthen India's domestic capabilities in advanced engineering and industrial production.

The fresh capital will be deployed across five priorities, including the construction of a 300,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility near Bengaluru, development of India's first proprietary multi-axis CNC controller, expansion of its AI-powered factory software platform Vesper, growth in semiconductor manufacturing and global expansion through dedicated teams in the US and Europe.

https://t.co/yr78XmHTSL

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

Every company loses knowledge when someone leaves.

Processes disappear.

Context disappears.

Relationships disappear.

The companies that capture organizational memory will become incredibly valuable.

AI is becoming the operating system for memory.

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

Watched Made in India: A Titan Story this weekend.

One line from the series stayed with me:
"Discussion nahi. Demonstration."

Such a simple concept.

Yet one of the most powerful lessons for entrepreneurs and manufacturers.

Most businesses spend too much time discussing possibilities.

Very few demonstrate outcomes.

I've seen this firsthand while building Optiwise.

Selling an AI-native ERP in India is not easy.

And honestly, it shouldn't be.
For a factory owner, changing systems is a big decision.

The problem is that most software is sold through discussions.

Sales presentations. Feature lists. PowerPoint slides. Future promises.

Everyone discusses what the software can do.

The real problems only appear during implementation.

That's where most projects fail.

Over the years, we've learned something important:

Customers don't need more discussions.

They need demonstrations.

Not just product demos.

Flow demonstrations.

Show them:
how planning will happen
how purchase will work
how production will be tracked
where bottlenecks will come
what will change for operators
what will change for management

The moment people can visualize their actual operations inside a system, decisions become much easier.

And surprisingly, many times we ourselves realize that we're not the right fit.

Which saves months of frustration for both sides.

This principle applies far beyond software.

In manufacturing, in sales, in leadership, in product building.
People rarely believe what you say.

They believe what you show.

Discussion creates interest.

Demonstration creates conviction.

[Sanskar Modi @sanskarmodi22]

India's manufacturing gap is not a skills problem.

Walk into any industrial cluster in Rajkot/Ludhiana & you'll find people doing precision work that would impress any global OEM.

The gap is in who we decide deserves capital, recognition, and a path to scale & it wasn't them.

[Sanskar Modi @sanskarmodi22]

The most underrated skill in hardware is knowing when the product is ready for the real world & when it isn't.

Shipping too early destroys trust that takes years to rebuild. Too late means someone else defines the category.

And that judgment is earned only through iteration.

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

The biggest manufacturing lesson I learned wasn't in India.

It was in China.

What surprised me wasn't the technology.

It wasn't robots.

It wasn't AI.

It was operational discipline.

Even relatively small factories had:

• live visibility
• digital records
• clear processes
• predictable execution

Nothing looked revolutionary.

But everything worked.

And that's the part most people miss.

Manufacturing competitiveness is rarely built through breakthroughs.

It's built through consistency.

India has incredible entrepreneurs.

Incredible engineers.

Incredible operators.

What we're missing is systems.

Not everywhere.

But at scale.

Imagine what happens when millions of MSMEs stop operating through WhatsApp groups, memory, and follow-ups.

Imagine if every factory owner could spend more time improving the business than chasing updates.

That's the opportunity.

Not just for Optiwise.

For Indian manufacturing itself.

The next decade won't belong to factories with the cheapest labor.

It will belong to factories with the fastest decision-making.

Do you think Indian manufacturing can close that gap within 10 years?

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

Copying Western systems won't cut it. China succeeded because they built infrastructure tailored strictly to their own geography and resource realities.

India has a completely unique landscape—literally and figuratively. Borrowed blueprints won't solve homegrown challenges. We need ground-up, indigenous systems built specifically for our context. 🇮🇳

#aicanoptiwise
#AtmanirbharBharat #TechSovereignty #Growth

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

@Mindzatwork Yes, We need every solution to be good and should hit the spot. Thats why build in public is necessary for bharat

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

One factory owner completely changed how we built Optiwise.

Not by buying it.

By rejecting it.

I was showing him our newest feature:

Real-time machine dashboards.
OEE charts.
Alerts.

Honestly?

I was proud of it.

He looked at the screen for 5 seconds and said:

"Yeh mujhe phone karta hai agar kuch bhi galat hota hai."

Then pointed to an operator.

"Dashboard ki zarurat kya hai?"

At first I thought he didn't understand the value.

Later I realized:

I didn't understand his problem.

He already had visibility.

The machine operator.
His morning rounds.
His phone.

What he didn't have was transferability.

His son couldn't run the factory like him.

The night shift supervisor couldn't think like him.

His experience existed only inside his head.

That meeting changed our roadmap.

We stopped building dashboards.

We started building systems that preserve operational knowledge.

A lot of software fails because founders solve the problem they imagine.

Not the problem customers actually have.

What's the best piece of business advice a customer has ever given you?

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

@JunoVortex So true, Staying in a system changes the Perspective of people working in it

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

@TatvaLogic Dm'ed you

[Vedant Awasthi @VedantOps]

Last week, we visited India’s First ERP expos.

Around 80+ exhibitors.
And honestly, it was a very interesting experience.

We explored every system from 2 perspectives:

1. As manufacturers
Because we are always curious to see if there are genuinely good solutions that can help Indian factories perform better and compete globally.

2. As Manufacturing System builders
To understand where Optiwise stands in terms of usability, practicality, pricing, and real shopfloor readiness.

(High confidence booster… IYKYK 🤭)

One thing became very clear:

Most ERP systems in India are still built with a very outdated mindset.

A lot of solutions were:

- old-school enterprise software with modern UI layers
- western workflows repackaged for Indian MSMEs
- overloaded with fancy terms that sound impressive but fail on actual shopfloors

And this is exactly where the problem starts.

Indian manufacturing does NOT operate like western manufacturing.

Our factories have:

- different workforce dynamics
- dependency-heavy operations
- lower process discipline
- adaptation resistance
- fragmented decision-making
- highly flexible workflows

You cannot solve Indian manufacturing by copy-pasting SAP-style thinking into MSMEs.

During our visits to China, one thing always stood out:

Even small factories there operate on stable digital systems.

Nothing flashy.
Nothing over-engineered.

Just systems built for THEIR ecosystem.

That operational speed compounds massively.

Meanwhile in India, many factories are still trying to run operations on:

- Tally
- WhatsApp
- Excel
- phone calls
- and “bhaiya ko pata hai”

That’s not digitization.

That’s an operational dependency disguised as a process.

The Indian manufacturing opportunity is so massive that every serious ERP player can grow if they truly solve ground-level problems.

But the future winners will be the ones building for Indian realities — not just reselling western workflows with Indian branding.

That’s exactly the approach we are trying to take with AICAN Optiwise.

India doesn’t just have a software problem.

We have:

- a systems problem
- a discipline problem
- and an adoption problem

Solve that properly, and Indian manufacturing can genuinely compete at global speed.
#manufacturing #erp #ai #optiwise #msme