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Story of Ankiti Bose a 23 years old girl who started a business called Zilingo

Story of Ankiti Bose founder and CEO of Zilingo Global

What is Zilingo?

It is an e-commerce platform for the fashion industry that allows user to sell their stuff online. It was founded in 2015 by Ankiti Bose and Dhruv Kapoor. Zilingo allows the yarn man to sell their product directly to the customers by cutting the middle man. Ankiti said “We enjoy the experience of trying and buying. Payment using a card or cash none of that is required, it’s a utility that should go away from our lives. We should enjoy every experience that is associated with retail”.

Asian countries are spending more money on fashion and beauty. As we see a lot of people are spending almost an hour of their day on Instagram. For that, every store wants an online presence these days. Firstly people see for shopping is clothes cheap and good because nobody tends to spend the four seasons in the year on a few clothes, so they buy more and more so that they don’t have to repeat and can frequently wear again and again. After that people want to look like the filters they are using on Instagram. That’s where they start spending on beauty.

How did Zilingo start?

Ankiti Bose was on a holiday in Bangkok. She visited a famous market called Chatuchak weekend market. Where she found out that these beautiful shops have no online presence. It stayed in her mind and she wanted to do something about it. So she started Zilingo for such platforms where people can sell their goods online.

Sequoia India was the first to seed fund in Zilingo. In series A the company raised $8 million in September 2016. In 2017 in series B the company raised an additional $18 million. In 2018 in series C $54 million was raised.

The company started growing on the Internet. They bring small merchants from the streets online. Catalogues, distribution, financial services, everything was handled by Zilingo.

They started focusing on B2B (Business to Business) for helping merchants to manage their e- commerce business. This included inventory management and sales tracking.

They expanded their software and tools which also can help with cross board shipping and inventory management.

In 2017 Zilingo was shipped to eight countries. Have centres in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Indonesia.

In 2019 in series D company made $226 million.

Zilingo was expanded to America at the time of the China and United States trade war, which make the United State’s workers leave China.

Ankiti Bose started a training program for women in Indonesia. Almost 40% of women leave their work after getting married in Indonesia.

Founder and CEO Ankiti Bose

Founder and CEO of Zilingo

She was 23 when she started Zilingo. She has completed her schooling at Cambridge School, Mumbai and college with mathematics and economics from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. She started her career working in Banglore at McKinsey & Company and Sequoia Capital. In 2015 she launches her own company called Zilingo.
In 2016 she moved to Singapore where Zilingo software was developed.
In 2019, Zilingo had seven million active users, gaining the global platform. In 2020 she was featured in 100 Women in Tech List in Singapore. She has spoken to World Economic Forum, involved in programs for supporting and mentoring women entrepreneurs.

Co-founder Dhruv Kapoor

Co-founder of Zilingo

He plays an important role in Zilingo’s development from B2C (Business to Consumer) to B2B (Business to Business).

He’s a Cheif technology, Product Officer and Co-founder of Zilingo. He give shape to the future of Zilingo. He had a keen interest in technology from early age. He lead all the technology and product team at Zilingo. His main goal is to introduce new products and maintain the online presence of all the businesses (small and big) . He also worked for “Ncinga” a Saas based Srilanka Comany as a frontend of Manufacturing Execution System.

Headquarters

Zilingo’s headquarters are in Singapore with spreading operations in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Phillippines, Australia, India and United States.