Zilingo

One of the most prominent change that technology is bringing to people’s lives is the manner in which they are going about their shopping. Globally, consumers are increasingly purchasing their requirements online via e-commerce marketplaces.

Online shopping is preferred by customers due to simple ‘anytime, anywhere, anything’ facility. The pandemic compelled everyone to shop online rather than visiting a brick-and-mortar store.

What Flipkart is to India, Zilingo is to South-East Asia.

How did it all start ?

Ankiti Bose (Co- Founder) was visiting Bangkok with her friends. When she entered Thailand’s Chatuchak market, most of the merchants were from the remote villages.  Their products had a huge demand, but these small merchants had no idea of digitalising their businesses. Resultantly, their margins shrunk even before their products could reach the marketplace. Small merchants had to rely on agents or distributors for their resources as they required lower quantities.  

Ankiti took cognizance of this matter as they lacked technical expertise as well as financial support. That’s when she decided to fix this old – school approach and help these small merchants sell products online. She decided to do business in Thailand as it could be helpful for more than 8000 small merchants.

At that time, Ankiti was working with Sequoia Capital as an analyst and was highly enthusiastic about kicking off her own company. She then met Dhruv Kapoor who was a graduate from IIT- Guwahati who had same ambitions as her. They founded Zilingo, which is one of the leading online platforms in South-East Asia.

Let’s dive in and see what makes Zilingo distinctive from other E-commerce platforms!

The sellers can freely list their products on the company website without paying any registration and licensing fee. The seller needs to pay 10% to 20% commission of the selling price only if the product is sold on the online marketplace.

Earlier, these small merchants had no way to compete with large conglomerates like H&M and Zara. That’s where Zilingo came in and helped these merchants with a gamut of solutions for all their problems like sourcing, financing, procuring raw materials, best price for shipping etc.

The company has risen above online sales to a position as a platform that caters to merchants, retailers and brands for both B2C and B2B sales. That’s been enabled by an early focus on providing basic services for retailers beyond just an online storefront.

It has been offering financial assistance for smaller manufactures through FinTech. FinTech is helpful for those who lack the funds but possess more magnificent workmanship. Zilingo also works with other financial companies for paying the advanced payments in the lowest interest rate.

It has developed number of technological tools that facilitates the clients from various countries to get connected. In fact, the tools also play a pivotal role in inventory management with alongwith cross-border shipping.

Zilingo also offers consulting which is specially developed into a huge network which prominently establishes the company called the Asia Mall. They primarily work in a business-to-business model. Small merchants could use the Asia Mall for quickly purchasing the raw materials at the most affordable price. Zilingo helps small clients in documentation as well as training about latest fashion trends.

Zilingo uses smart, technology-led solutions to re-imagine the fashion supply chain

Software: SaaS connects merchants and factories to digitize, automate and scale painlessly, thus removing unnecessary middlemen that eat into their margins.

Data Science: Artificial Intelligence predicts upcoming fashion trends that can be produced and on-shelf in as few as 21 days to reduce overproduction and waste.

Financial Services: Unlocked credit, working capital and insurance enable fair and healthy competition in the market.

Sustainability: Global network of sustainable supply creates opportunity and transparency in sustainable retailing.

Compliance: Zilingo grants access to internationally recognized auditing and compliance services to ensure responsible manufacturing.

Now Zilingo has its headquarters in Singapore and the company also receives tech support from Bangalore.  It has established itself in South East Asian countries since there was no competition from e-commerce giants.

Marketing

To generate awareness for its wide selection of fashion offerings, Zilingo ran a brand awareness campaign in Indonesia with the aim of reaching out to fashion lovers. The fun and light-hearted videos showed people dressed in different styles, highlighting the fact that Zilingo offers over 2 million products to suit many tastes. The videos also used emojis and text overlays to convey the brand’s key message, “fashion for everyone”, and encourage people to browse the marketplace.

Just like fashion seasons, the winds of change surrounding marketing trends move quickly, sometimes at a rate that surprises even the most experienced marketers and industry insiders. Adapting to these trends can be an uphill task.

Ergo, to meet up with the changing marketing trends Zilingo also added a shopping feature on their Instagram which allows audiences to check the product prices immediately from the pictures that are uploaded on social media. Marketers believe that the Shopping feature will bring about a great impact to the conversion numbers as it can trigger purchase intentions.

Industrial Variables

Escalating urban population with growing access to internet with government taking various initiatives in order to make internet accessible to everyone.

Also, surging smartphones penetration with various ecommerce players investing hefty amounts in expanding their geographical presence has been anticipated to infuse growth in the market for Fashion Ecommerce. As a result, worldwide revenue and revenue per user (ARPU) are both projected to grow: