Zilingo raises a massive $54mn in Series C within just three years of launch

Belgium-based investment group Sofina, Singapore-based Burda Principal Investments and Sequoia Capital India jointly led the round

Zilingo, an online fashion marketplace started by Indian entrepreneurs Ankiti Bose and Dhruv Kapoor, with a technology centre in Bangalore, has closed a whopping $54 million in Series C round of funding within just three years of its launch.

Belgium-based investment group Sofina, Singapore-based Burda Principal Investments and Sequoia Capital India jointly led the round in the startup, which connects online sellers/retailers in Southeast Asia with fashion lovers across Asia.

UK-based Amadeus Capital, besides all of Zilingo’s existing backers, including American billionaire Tim Draper, SIG, Venturra, Beenext, and Manik Arora, participated.

This round brings the firm’s total funding raised to date to $82 million.

The fresh infusion of capital will be used to focus deeply and boost the Indonesia business, foray into other Southeast Asian markets and the cross-border businesses. It also plans to further expand the supply base across Cambodia, Bangladesh, in addition to ASEAN markets.

Zilingo has earlier raised three big rounds of fundings — a $17 million in Series B funding, led by Burda Principal Investments and Sequoia Capital India, in September 2017; $8 million in late 2016; and $2 million in November 2015.

Founded in October 2015, Zilingo lets merchants upload and manage their inventory in any language using any currency. Sellers get facilities such as free shipping, free packaging, doorstep pickup and free and secure payment options.

In addition, it also helps sellers maximise their reach through various tools and strategies.

Zilingo has both B2B and B2C platforms. While the B2C version allows fashion buyers to buy from thousands of merchants, who used the Zilingo Seller Platform at their offline/online store, the B2B business, called AsiaMall, allows merchants around the world to buy wholesale from Asian suppliers.

Zilingo currently lists over two million products under the fashion, beauty and lifestyle categories.

Today, Zilingo sells in Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, ships internationally to four more countries, and has supply bases in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, China, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia.

The startup claims to have over 10,000 independent merchants currently using the platform.

“It has been an incredible few months for Zilingo. We have grown 11x in terms of revenue, launched a huge and successful TV campaign in Indonesia, which has resulted in a big spike in our Indonesia growth in terms of buyers, orders and sales. We have also expanded the merchant ecosystem to include a tremendous artillery of services, making Zilingo a one-of-a-kind product over 10,000 merchants across Asia,” Bose added.

Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Sequoia (India) Singapore, said: “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 finalised weeks after the last one and is a ringing endorsement of how much potential the investor group sees in the company.”