Founded by Ankiti Bose and Dhruv Kapoor in October 2015, Zilingo was built to connect a highly
fragmented landscape of fashion supply to fashion lovers across Asia. “Nowhere in the world
has a horizontal e-commerce company also cracked fashion. It’s a unique, high margin category
which is highly dependent on fast-moving cycles and has its own nuances. Unlike buying
detergent or electronics, fashion is much more about your choice, individuality and trends. It
requires a different approach than rest of e-commerce.” Says Bose who while backpacking
across Thailand & Indonesia saw the labyrinthine markets selling everything from slogan t-shirts
to maxi dresses and was inspired to start Zilingo.

Bose, along with Kapoor set out to build a proprietary seller platform that let merchants upload
& manage their inventory in any language, using any currency, connecting them through 25
APIs with logistics, warehousing and payment providers, as well as services like loans,
cataloging and insurance. They launched their B2C sites and apps in November 2015 across
ASEAN to let fashion buyers buy from thousands of these merchants who used their Zilingo
Seller Platform at their offline or online store. They soon also launched their B2B business,
Zilingo’s AsiaMall which allows merchants around the world to buy wholesale from Asian
suppliers.

Today, Zilingo sells in Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, ships internationally to 4 more countries
and has supply bases in it’s home countries of Singapore, Thailand & Indonesia, as well as
China, Bangladesh, Vietnam & Cambodia. With over 10,000 independent merchants using the
platform selling to millions of customers around Asia and the world, Zilingo aspires to take
Asian fashion to the world.

The growth story & recent funding
It’s been an exciting year of business at Zilingo; The company has emerged as one of the fastest
growing players in the region. It has grown 10x by revenues, launched a TV campaign in
Indonesia and expanded the merchant ecosystem to include a tremendous arsenal of services,
making it a one-of-a-kind product for over 10,000 merchants & private labels across Asia.
Zilingo has raised USD 54 Million – in a Series C , to grow further and expand internationally.
This takes total funding raised by the company to USD 82 Million . The round was led by Sofina,
Burda Principal Investments and Sequoia Capital India. Amadeus Capital too joins as a new
investor. All existing investors participated in the round including American billionaire Tim
Draper, SIG, Venturra, Beenext, Manik Arora along with others. This round comes close on the
heels of Zilingo’s USD 17 Million Series B raised 5 months ago.

Bose says, “We think the market is showing us the right signs in terms of adoption and
retention, so it’s good to double down. We are grateful to all the investors for continuously
showing great faith in our team and our vision for fashion commerce in this region.”
Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital (India) Singapore says “The Zilingo
investment is special for Sequoia because our association started with a seed investment even
before the Zilingo service was first launched. Ankiti and Dhruv have totally impressed us with
the quality of team they have assembled, their innovative e-commerce strategy and playbook
and their speed and quality of execution, all of which resulted in more than 10x revenue growth
in the last one year. This new round was finalized weeks after the last one and is a ringing
endorsement of how much potential the investor group sees in the company. We’re glad to
have invested significantly across all rounds the company has raised.”

Albert Shyy, Principal at Burda says ” Zilingo is creating a complete ecosystem for merchants to
grow their online fashion business in Southeast Asia and beyond – we believe there is an
untapped opportunity across the entire Asian fashion value chain & continue to be very
impressed with the company’s trajectory”

More about Zilingo:
Zilingo is about your own identity, not conforming to societal standards of beauty.
For decades, the fashion industry has propagated conformity about what ideal appearances
are. Zilingo is breaking that. The team truly believes fashion is something unique to every
individual and there are no rules. Everyone has the right and freedom to express style in the
way that they want. They provide users with an unlimited selection of products and styles.
Whether a user wants expensive or cheap, branded or street, designer wear or indie labels,
hijab or skirts, pastels or pop, they’ve got them covered. Zilingo’s assortment covers products in
Fashion, Beauty and Lifestyle and users can browse through thousands of stores and over 2
million products to fi nd what’s unique to their style.

Using technology, Zilingo is levelling the playing field for offline fashion merchants &
designers in an increasingly digital world.

The team truly believes that no merchant is too small or too big to grow their business online
and should be placed on a level playing field. Zilingo’s mission from day one has been to create
an ecosystem where every seller can do what they do best – make beautiful products. The rest
of the work to sell online – is on Zilingo. The company has got 25+ API Integrations for logistics
and payments that allows the seller to ship from one single location to multiple countries. At
the same time, the Zilingo Seller Centre allows the merchant to manage an online store in any
language and currency of their choice, sell in many different countries and receive payments
internationally for orders in their local currency irrespective of where the order came from.
They also help sellers with a multitude of other services.

There are currently 10000+ merchants & private labels benefitting from the Zilingo Seller
Platform.

Gone are the days when fashion weeks in Europe set trends! In today’s world, there’s a lot to
it – pop culture, news, social media and more.

There used to be a time when trends only changed once every season, with design houses in
New York and Paris telling everyone what to do. Today, trend life-cycles are shorter and style is
much more about the individual and their choices of expression. Every time a celebrity
Instragrams something, however outrageous, it could topple every trend-analyst’s forecast!
Zilingo is using it’s own proprietary algorithms to track & project these fast-moving,
ever-changing, modular trends using AI – so that the merchants and buyers never miss a beat.

Diversity in our team brings us a very unique perspective on scaling
Our team is a diverse group of millennials. We look for people who think fast and come to the
table with creative solutions using tech and data and are able to execute these ideas with
speed. Every country in Asia is a different beast and we know we can never paint this region
with the same brush, so each of our offices is led by strong local leaders who understand the
nuances and challenges of their market deeply. 50% of our top leadership is held by women
and we’re well represented by the LGBTQ community as well. “Having so many women at the
leadership level, despite being a tech company gives us a unique edge while scaling” says Bose,
“Our leadership team comes from 10 different countries in Asia, Europe and North America and
speak in 15 different languages. The cultural diversity gives the team a unique perspective on
how to solve challenges with creative solutions.”

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Quick Facts
Founded: October 2015
Founders: Ankiti Bose CEO, Dhruv Kapoor CTO
Offices: Singapore (HQ), Jakarta, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Bangalore
Merchants to date: 10,000
Product selection: 2 million+
Fundraising to date: 82 million USD
Latest Round: 54 million USD – Series C
Investors: Sequoia Capital (India) Singapore, Burda Principal Investments, Sofina, Venturra
Capital, Beenext, Beenos, Tim Draper, Amadeus Capital Partners, Manik Arora, Wavemaker
Partners, Digital Garage