SINGAPORE (Feb 13): Zilingo’s path to becoming a fashion platform with a valuation approaching US$1 billion ($1.36 billion) began in December 2014 when Ankiti Bose, then an analyst at Sequoia India, chatted with a neighbour at a house party in the Indian tech capital Bengaluru.
Bose, then 23, and Dhruv Kapoor, a 24-year-old software engineer at gaming studio Kiwi Inc, quickly realised they had complementary skills and similar ambitions to build their own startup. Four months later they had quit their jobs, and each had put in their US$30,000 in savings to found Zilingo, an online platform that allows small merchants in Southeast Asia to build scale.
On Tuesday, the Singapore-based company said it raised US$226 million from investors including Sequoia Capital and Temasek Holdings. The latest financing valued Zilingo at $970 million, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the information is private. That makes 27-year-old Bose among the youngest female chief executives to lead a startup of the size in Asia.
