Premium Case Study 08 - Zilingo

Once a “darling” in Southeast Asia’s e-commerce world, Zilingo shocked the world as it commenced the year 2023 with bankruptcy. Here, we’ve listed the reasons why the Singaporean-based startup failed.

Company Overview

Zillingo is an e-commerce platform that lets merchants source fashion, beauty, lifestyle, and other items.

The platform was once considered a darling of Southeast Asian tech startups. It almost hit a $1 billion valuation in 2019, making its founder Ankiti Bose the first Indian woman to do so.

With its promising reputation, Zilingo was once thought to follow the steps of e-commerce giants like Amazon and Alibaba. It attracted prominent investors such as Sequoia Capital, Temasek Holdings, and more.

Unfortunately, things went downhill amidst mismanagement issues and scandals. And in January 2023, Zilingo announced its dissolution.

• Description: Zilingo is an online business-to-business (B2B) marketplace that allows retailers to source apparel, fabrics, yarn, among others.

• Category: E-commerce, wholesale, fashion

• Country: Singapore

• Period: 2015-2023

• Size of the company: 201-500 employees

• Number of funding rounds: 7

• Number of investors: 23

• Total amount raised: $347.9 million

The company is a great example of how a rattling plot twist can always happen in the tech industry, and we have a lot to learn from this. So, what caused Zilingo to fail?