Zilingo, a fashion marketplace focused on Southeast Asian market, has raised $17 Mn through series B round. The round was led by Sequoia Capital India & Burda Principal Investments, while existing investors including Venturra Capital, SIG, Beenext, and Wavemaker also participated. Additionally, new investors Tim Draper (founder of DFJ) and IDG Ventures India also made contribution to this round.
Zilingo was incorporated in late 2015 by two Indian co-founders Ankiti Bose and Dhruv Kapoor. The reason Bose and Kapoor chose to go for Southeast Asian markets like Singapore, Bangkok and Jakarta is because of the fantastic growth opportunity. Both co-founders have spent lot of time in these cities and even conducted thorough market research, which has pegged the fashion market at whopping $20 Bn. However, much of this market is dominated by unorganized and small players, with startups like Zilingo expecting this to change in near future.
The startup is currently headquartered in Bangkok, while full-fledged tech team is operating from the IT hub Bengaluru city.
Last year, Zilingo raked up $8 Mn through series A round in September. At that time, the startup claimed to be operationally profitable and expected to seize more market share across the targeted markets. Flash forward to 2017, Bose and Kapoor claim that they have successfully increased their market share. Although both co-founders did not specifically shed light on market share, but claimed that their company has grown over 1000% and clocked 25% month on month growth since the series A funding.
Lot of this growth, as has been shared by founders, is thanks to their investment in new technologies. Especially their investment in Artificial intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) helped the firm in staying head of the curve.
Zilingo as of now has no plans to enter into Indian market, where Flipkart owned myntra and jabong dominate the marketplace.