Pritam Dutta & Zoth.io: Reshaping Finance by Bringing Real-World Assets On-Chain

Meet Pritam Dutta, the Founder and CEO of Zoth.io. With over 15 years navigating the complexities of fintech, e-commerce, and Web 3.0 across global giants like Anheuser-Busch InBev, Unilever, and Kimberly-Clark, Pritam is now pioneering a new frontier. His venture, Zoth.io, isn't just another crypto project; it's a meticulously designed ecosystem aiming to unlock trillions in traditional finance liquidity by bringing Real-World Assets (RWAs) on-chain in a truly DeFi-native way. 

Sri Misra, Founder of aarna protocol recently had the chance to sit down with Pritam for an in-depth conversation on the alpha un# podcast. He shared his insights and the Zoth story here unhashed.co/pritam! 

The Journey Before Zoth: From Corporate Leader to Serial Entrepreneur

Pritam's path to founding Zoth is rich with diverse experiences. Armed with a Master's degree from MNNIT, Allahabad, and further executive education from Stanford GSB and INSEAD, his early career saw him driving significant digital transformation initiatives at Mahindra & Mahindra and Unilever. At Unilever, he managed multi-million Euro technology portfolios, led global data strategy, and helmed consumer tech innovation across Asia-Pacific.

His entrepreneurial spirit surfaced with Pasto, a food tech venture he co-founded and exited after achieving a $2 million ARR. Simultaneously, recognizing the gap in early-stage funding, particularly in India compared to Silicon Valley, he co-founded Eagle10 Ventures in Dubai. This angel syndicate backed over 50 startups, achieving two unicorn exits and showcasing Pritam's knack for identifying high-potential ventures.

"My personal experience is that lot of investors are available when you have basically scaling but at that initial stage where say valley has a very strong ecosystem you are very limited in support here especially I'm talking about like five, six years ago, things have improved now, was not available in India."

The Genesis of Zoth: An Insight Born from Global Experience

The "light bulb moment" for Zoth came during Pritam's time at Anheuser-Busch InBev, where he served as Managing Director for Fintech & Web 3.0. Tasked with building and scaling fintech innovations, primarily for SMBs in emerging markets like Latin America and Africa, Pritam and his co-founder Kaushik observed a critical trend. Even without traditional bank accounts, many small business owners had digital wallets and a keen interest in stablecoins as a hedge against local currency devaluation.

This experience highlighted the immense potential of stablecoins but also the monopolistic nature of the market, controlled by a few large players. Pritam realized that while anyone could issue a stablecoin, distribution and creating real utility were the major hurdles. This sparked the idea for Zoth: a decentralized infrastructure allowing anyone to issue RWA-backed stablecoins and leverage a shared network for utility and distribution, moving beyond the limitations of merely fractionalizing assets.

"So Zoth actually started from, was pretty much like a light bulb moment for us."

"Stablecoin market as of today is monopolistic, it is controlled by two large players and pretty much everything around distribution and circulation is owned by them. But what we believe is that this is going to be one of the biggest inventions in this space and this will completely accelerate how money moves in future."

Decoding Zoth.io: Bridging TradFi and DeFi with RWA Restaking

Zoth.io, founded in 2022 (though Pritam mentions starting work in Jan 2023 and launching the restaking layer in Dec 2024 ), aims to solve the RWA puzzle differently. Pritam noted that traditional RWA tokenization hadn't scaled like DeFi because its permissioned nature clashed with crypto's core tenets.

"RWA is a real world asset tokenization has been around for what five years since I have been in crypto. They have never really spoken, never really picked up in terms of scale, in terms of size... primarily because the whole RWA permission structure goes against the very tenets of crypto, which is permissionless, DeFi native, multiple DeFi utility."

"Just breaking a large faction to smaller pieces increases liquidity, it doesn't. Because you know... why would I want to buy say a small faction of a real estate asset if there is no further utility on top of it?"

Instead of just tokenizing assets like bonds or treasuries in a permissioned way, Zoth focuses on creating DeFi-native utility. The core idea revolves around an "RWA restaking layer". Here’s a simplified breakdown:

1. Collateralization: Users can deposit highly liquid, verified RWA tokens (initially focusing on fixed-income assets like tokenized T-bills or money market funds from Zoth and partners like Hash Note, Open Eden, Usual Money) into the Zoth protocol.

2. Minting ZeUSD: Based on the collateral's value and quality (Loan-to-Value ratios vary, e.g., up to 99% for USDC, 85% for staked assets), users can mint Zoth's stablecoin, ZeUSD.

3. DeFi Utility: ZeUSD is designed to be a permissionless, DeFi-native token. This allows holders to use it across the DeFi ecosystem for lending, borrowing, staking, payments, and remittances – unlocking capital efficiency and yield opportunities typically unavailable for traditional RWAs. Users can acquire ZeUSD directly using other stablecoins like USDT/USDC, with plans to add pairs for BTC, ETH, and SOL. ZeUSD itself is designed to be reward-generating.

"At z Zoth, we are creating a decentralized infrastructure where ah RWS could be put as a collateral and a stable token can be minted, called ZUSD. What it allows is um capital efficiency... and means ZUSD which is a fully definitive permissionless token on top. It allows them multiple capital um efficiency and at the same time multiple DeFi use cases which is generally not available for any ah RW assets..."

Zoth acts as a network, allowing various verified partners to issue assets onto the platform and leveraging a broad distribution network, aiming to create a more decentralized and community-owned RWA ecosystem. The platform operates with a Cayman-regulated fund for permissioned issuance and a Panama entity for its permissionless, DeFi-native operations.

Zoth by the Numbers: Traction and Growth

Despite launching during a crypto winter following the FTX collapse, Zoth has demonstrated significant traction:

"So we started Zoth actually at a very um interesting time, you know, um around a few months ago, FTX had crashed. So I was actually thinking, you know, whether we made the right decision to start a crypto company at that point."

• Funding: Raised $6.5 million in total, including a $4 million Series A in August 2024, and an earlier round of $4.5 million mentioned in the podcast from investors including Ripple, Blockchain Founders Fund, Borderless, SOSV, Chainlink Build, Brinc, and Graviton. Pritam also mentioned an initial friends & family round.

• Community & Reach: Built a massive community with over 2 million verified wallets, 1 million+ engaged members across socials, and achieving 200k Daily Active Users (DAU) at one point. Their testnet campaigns drove significant engagement, achieving over 25 million transactions on their platform and 12 million+ on their Atlas testnet.

• TVL & Origination: Reached $32 million in on-chain TVL, with pre-deposit commitments surging past $158 million. The platform has originated $129 million in credit and deployed/contracted $16 million in liquidity with partners. They also celebrated selling $25 million worth of ZeUSD in January 2025.

• Partnerships: Forged strategic partnerships with major players like Chainlink, Fidelity, Standard Chartered, Celo, XDC, Funfair, Polygon, Stellar, and others.

Building a Community-First, Multi-Chain Protocol

A cornerstone of Zoth's strategy was prioritizing distribution and community building before pushing the final product. They achieved this through:

• Gamified Testnets: Partnering with emerging chains like Movement Labs, Berachain, and Plume during their testnet phases. They created engaging experiences allowing users to interact with Zoth (minting test ZeUSD, swapping) and earn rewards, often linked with partner chain incentives. This viral approach built significant brand awareness and a dedicated user base.

• Chain-Neutral Community: While leveraging partnerships, Zoth focused on building its own community, independent of any single chain. Pritam emphasizes a multi-chain future, aiming to meet customers wherever they are.

• Experimentation: A core philosophy is to "try things out" rather than getting bogged down in strategy, allowing them to adapt quickly and seize opportunities, as seen with their community growth far exceeding initial targets.

"Every crypto company is a consumer company... product is absolute important... but a bad product will suffer if there is no distribution."

"We are a multi-chain company. We believe that... liquidity will be concentrated across few chains... but there will be more and more chains coming in... I need to be in as many chains as possible I need to be where my customer is the customer won't come to me I will go to my customer."

"Our my philosophy is that you know you try things out rather than making strategy rather than making doing things let's try it out if it doesn't work doesn't work it's a sunk cost we'll move on."

Pritam's Vision: The Future of Finance On-Chain

Pritam Dutta sees a future where a significant portion of finance moves on-chain, particularly the business of moving money globally. He believes RWA-backed stablecoins are the most robust model and views upcoming regulations, like those potentially emerging in the US, as opportunities that will favor well-structured, transparent platforms like Zoth.

His ambition is bold:

"So I see Zoth maybe in the you know top three financial players in the world because I believe that ah more and more finance as it is done today would move on chain especially the business of moving money from one place to other and Zoth would be one of the largest players in this place not regionally but globally and we believe as a team we have the right rigor to go there."

Having been recognized as an Economic Times Young Leader, a Top 10 Digital Innovator in India, and one of the NEXT 100 Future CIOs, Pritam combines deep industry experience with a clear, ambitious vision for Zoth.io.

Zoth's approach of building a DeFi-native utility layer on top of RWAs, combined with a strong focus on community and distribution, positions it as a fascinating project to watch in the rapidly evolving intersection of traditional finance and blockchain technology.