Zilingo Set For Liquidation After Months-Long Struggle For Survival

Singapore-based B2B fashion tech company Zilingo is set to enter liquidation after a months-long crisis at the startup as it struggled to survive. The company’s board has appointed EY as a provisional liquidator, Bloomberg reported citing sources. 

The Zilingo board has informed major shareholders and creditors of the liquidation.

The liquidation comes after Zilingo creditors Varde Partners and Indies Capital Partners found a buyer for some of the B2B startup’s assets. The assets have been transferred to the new owner for an undisclosed amount, according to sources cited by the publication.

Inc42 exclusively reported in June 2022 that the Zilingo board had started weighing its options, with liquidation on the table since then.

Around the same time, cofounders Dhruv Kapoor and Ankiti Bose pitched a plan for a buyout, which eventually did not materialise. Bose also tried to pay off Zilingo’s debt worth $40 Mn on her own but failed in these efforts.

The crisis at the company resulted in cofounder and CEO Bose being ousted, followed by other high-profile exits such as former board member Shailendra Singh, CFO Ramesh Bafna and COO Aadi Vaidya.

The startup has been without a CEO since Bose was fired in May 2022.

Zilingo once claimed to have operations across at least eight countries with hundreds of employees in India and Southeast Asia. Right now, however, Zilingo has fewer than 100 staff in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh after a major downsizing amid the crisis, as per the report.

The company saw around 100 employees leave amid growing uncertainty around its survival after the falling out between Bose and Singh.

Throughout it all, Bose denied any claims of wrongdoing, insisting that she was being unfairly targeted in a ‘witch hunt’. She added that the Zilingo board fired her for ‘insubordination’ rather than any allegations of financial irregularities.

She had also alleged workplace and sexual harassment at Zilingo, which were said to be under investigation but as of now, there is no update on its status.

Once valued at nearly $1 Bn, Zilingo’s liquidation comes after it imploded following allegations of financial irregularities at the startup. In 2019, Zilingo raised a mammoth $226 Mn funding round, but mismanagement of these funds was a critical factor in its fall. 

According to an investigation conducted by Inc42 last year, operations in India, Indonesia and Thailand were poorly managed while the company also expanded into B2C operations without a concrete plan.