How a Bengaluru 27-year-old built $1 billion fashion start-up in south-east Asia: Zilingo
Thinking of any big idea is quite easy, but to implement it successfully matters. Isn’t it? Starting a business is like planting a sapling, that needs care and sources like sun, water, and soil to develop. Similarly, in business, you have to invest your time and money to take care of it in order to get the blossoms which make all the patience and hard work worthwhile. Here is the story of two young Entrepreneurs, Ankiti Bose and Dhruv Kapoor who realized they had complementary skills and similar ambitions and built $1 billion fashion start-up Zilingo.
So, the journey began in December 2014, When the founder and co-founder of Zilingo, Dhruv Kapoor and Ankiti Bose were 24 and, a 23-year-old working as a software engineer at gaming studio Kiwi and Ankiti working as an analyst at Sequoia India. During the house party, which was held in the Indian tech capital of Bengaluru, they realized their matching entrepreneur skills to build their own start-up.
Soon after, they had quit their jobs, and each had put in their $US30,000 in savings to found Zilingo, one-stop fashion destination. They built a service that capitalized on Southeast Asia’s, that helps in growing internet connectivity which brings small fashion vendors from the street markets into the e-commerce cover. The street vendors are from cities like Bangkok and Jakarta.
On Tuesday, the Singapore-based company said it raised $US226 million from investors including Sequoia Capital and Temasek Holdings. Yeah, Of course, that’s really a piece of great news, As we know female founders remain rare in the global startup world. Whereas, Kapoor holds the title of chief technology officer. Furthermore, Zilingo at $970 million, according to people familiar with the matter. This makes the 27-year-old Bose among the youngest female chief executives to lead a startup of the size in Asia.
“We were a bunch of twenty-somethings with nothing except this dream and we decided to chase it,” Bose said.
Considering the revenues of the Zilingo, Revenue grew by 4X over the past year, $S1.8 million ($1.9 million) in the year ended on March 31, 2017, up from about $S434,000 since its inception through March 2016. And, It’s expected to exceed $US100 billion by 2025.
Zilingo, helps the retailers or brands by its end-to-end solution to make and source their product- Go after b2b opportunities in the supply chain.
She is now a great symbol of young female entrepreneurs, who co-founded online e-commerce marketplace to provide a platform where thousands of fashion merchants could sell and become part of the digital economy.
She said, At the beginning(pre-startup years), “I kept raising my hand and said, ‘Teach me everything. “I busted my ass, working 18 hours a day because it was so much fun.”
Ankiti Bose is now part of a group of founders in south-east Asia, capitalizing on the region’s rapid adoption of smartphones and rising incomes.
Good Luck! 
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