SINGAPORE — April 5, 2018 — 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 and 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 And 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 $54 Million – in a Series C , to grow further and expand internationally.
This takes total funding raised by the company to $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 $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”
Posted April 5, 2018
Source: Zilingo