Zilingo’s Collapse: Inside Ankiti Bose’s Multimillion-Dollar Implosion

Zilingo’s Collapse: Inside Ankiti Bose’s Multimillion-Dollar Implosion

SUMMARY

A year after controversy derailed Zilingo, new information received from dozens of sources shows us Ankiti Bose was allegedly at the centre of everything that went wrong for the once-celebrated startup

Building a startup is walking the fine line between courage and hubris, and for years Zilingo’s Ankiti Bose showed the world that she could. Till she finally slipped towards hubris, and crashed.“Ms Bose’s silence has been misconstrued as a weakness and a pile of rubbish allegations have been thrown at her because “unnamed sources” with one sided narratives and half-baked information have been given way too much importance without proper evidence.”“Kroll Inc. was jointly hired by the main investors to examine this case and the investigations on financial irregularities have been completed. As the investors are still considering options for legal action, please understand that we cannot comment on any details from the report or share any further information at the moment,” said Burda in a statement to Inc42.“There was an appalling lack of transparency and failure to follow due process in the instigation of a malicious witch-hunt by the Zilingo board against Ms Bose. This witch-hunt involved the appointment of Kroll, supposedly by the company but in reality, based on documents sighted by Ms Bose’s legal representatives – this was commissioned by one single investor,” Bose’s spokesperson told Inc42.Here it must be noted that Ankiti Bose has said that she has not seen the Kroll report directly. “Despite multiple requests as an affected party, as a shareholder and a board member to have visibility on the contents of this report, Ms Bose has yet to this day sight this report,” her response said.“All payments at Zilingo, all USD 300Mn, not just the 2Mn [to OneDelta] required Ms Bose’s final approval as a process. They were processed by the finance team.” — Ankiti Bose, through her spokespersonShe added, “Mr. Vaidya’s salary has actually increased the highest as he received an 8X salary increase and was granted almost $20 Mn+ of stock options — NEARLY ALL FULLY VESTED — as opposed to the measly numbers before.”“The claims of any personal relationship or personal fallout between Shailendra [Singh] and Ankiti are completely baseless and have no merit whatsoever. This seems to fall into a larger pattern of targeting people once the wrongdoing was called out,” added one of the sources.Her response reproduced verbatim, “We think the question to ask is instead how she has managed to keep herself together in the face of brutal paid media and social media barrage, threats of mental and physical harm, threats of rape.

From a Southeast Asian and Indian startup success story to allegations of fraud and revenue inflation, a social media war and finally liquidation — when we look at the Zilingo story through this montage, it might seem like Zilingo’s demise is just like thousands of other startups before it.This is not to say she has precluded any avenues of legal recourse but the past few months have been a period of tremendous trauma and turmoil amidst all the maliciousness directed at her. Even when the men in tech are morally depraved, somehow the women are paying the price of it. But again, watch this space for more. Ms Bose has chosen to speak up now so this will not be the last you hear of her.”

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