Bangkok-based Zilingo, a shopping app for small sellers who do not have an online presence, has raised $8 million in Series A funding from Venturra Capital, Sequoia India and Susquehanna International Group, it said in a statement.
Zilingo is South Asia’s hottest new marketplace, now shipping to Thailand, Singapore and India. Get the trendiest new products, delivered to your doorstep with quick customer service and easy returns.
Ankiti Bose, CEO and co-founder, Zilingo, said, “We charge our sellers over 10-15 percent commission… and share discounts with them and stopped doing business in verticals where there was no margin to be made. It means we reduced our burn and extended our runway while our competitors increasingly ran out of cash.”
“Zilingo has one of the strongest founding teams we have come across in the region. We are confident that Zilingo’s ability to execute, coupled with its proprietary technology, will allow the company to expand and become the regional leader in its category,” said Tee Suraphongchai, Partner at Venturra Capital, lead investor in Zilingo’s series A.
Zilingo was founded by former investment analyst at Sequoia India – Ankiti Bose along with her friend Dhruv Kapoor, who was working at a gaming startup in Bangalore. The platform enables sellers to list their products on its mobile marketplace. After signing up for the service, sellers get an entire seller-centre and a seller app to fulfill all their needs. They also get access to analytics, ratings, performance, and business intelligence.
Zilingo is also working with the Vue.ai artificial intelligence (AI) platform to incorporate visual search and personalization features into its app. Vue.ai is the product of MadStreetDen, an India-US startup also backed by Sequoia.