Zilingo Ankiti Bose

2022 - 4 - 12

Ankiti Bose

Post cover — Image courtesy of "Inc42 Media"

Zilingo CEO Ankiti Bose Suspended Amid Financial Investigation (Inc42 Media)

Zilingo has suspended its cofounder and CEO Ankiti Bose amid an internal investigation into accounting practices and financials.

The company has raised over $308 Mn till date, with Germany’s Burda and Sofina Capital being its other major investors. She is said to have called the investigation a “witch hunt”, according to the publication. The company was said to be in talks to raise $150 Mn-$200 Mn at a unicorn valuation.

Zilingo Is Said To Suspend Ceo Ankiti Bose Amid Probe | Mint (Livemint)

Zilingo Pte, one of Singapore's highest-profile startups, has suspended Chief Executive Officer Ankiti Bose after an effort to raise new funding led to ...

“We were a bunch of twenty-somethings with nothing except this dream and we decided to chase it," she said at the time. The company made an aggressive pitch in its latest effort to raise fresh capital. Zilingo, which had grown into a full-blown marketplace for wholesale buyers and sellers in the fashion industry, faced growth troubles after pandemic-fueled restrictions forced many small businesses to shut their doors. In early 2019, Zilingo raised $226 million from investors including Sequoia and Temasek, and pushed its valuation to $970 million, almost the $1 billion mark that earns startups designation as a unicorn. She has hired an attorney to represent her, Abraham Vergis of Providence Law Asia, and has called the investigation a “witch hunt," according to correspondence reviewed by Bloomberg News. The concerns center on the way that Zilingo, which regulators said had not filed annual financial statements since 2019, accounted for transactions and revenue across a platform spanning thousands of small merchants.

Zilingo suspends CEO Ankiti Bose; she calls it a 'witch hunt' (Economic Times)

Bose has disputed these allegations and contested her suspension, calling the companys action a “witch hunt” that was triggered by harassment complaints she ...

Grover eventually resigned from the company on March 1, but both he and BharatPe’s board and management continue to have public spats. This probe began after the company, which was last valued at $120 million, got a term sheet from Denmark’s Bestseller A/S, for a new funding round at a valuation of around $750 million. On March 12, ET was the first to report that EY India was conducting a forensic audit at Trell. Subsequently, ET reported citing sources on April 4 that Sequoia had called for the probe at Trell after receiving whistle-blower complaints.

Who Is Ankiti bose? Singapore Tech Company Suspends CEO Amid ... (SheThePeople)

Ankiti Bose is the co-founder and CEO of Singaporean multi-national start-up company Zilingo. According to reports, the company has suspended its CEO after ...

She started her career at McKinsey and Co. and Sequoia Capital in Bengaluru. In 2015, she left her job at Sequoia Capital to start her company Zilingo. She developed the software for Zilingo in Singapore in 2016. Bose’s attorney has argued that the directors did not follow proper procedures and challenged their right to suspend the CEO. Zilingo CEO Bose has been suspended from her duties amid the financial investigations.

SG's Zilingo said to have suspended CEO Ankiti Bose amid probe (DealStreetAsia)

Singapore-based B2B retail platform Zilingo is said to have suspended its chief executive officer Ankiti Bose amid a probe into the company's accounting and ...

This forced Zilingo to roll back its expansion plans and make job cuts across the US, Australia, Indonesia and Singapore. It has projected to break even on core EBITDA in fiscal 2023 and reach $200 million in 2026. Temasek’s Xu Wei Pang and Burda Principal Investments’s Albert Shyy left Zilingo’s board last month while the former chief financial officer James Perry, a Citigroup veteran, exited in 2020 barely a year after joining the firm. Bose was called to a meeting with three board members on March 31 to discuss complaints about financial mismanagement and discrepancies, per the report. According to the Bloomberg report, Bose’s suspension was linked to questions about the company’s financials. The firm’s last major raise was a $226-million Series D round back in 2019.

Is Zilingo CEO Ankiti Bose's suspension an attempt to hush her ... (YourStory.com)

According to media reports, Ankiti Bose of Zilingo has been suspended amid investigations of accounting issues. However, there's more to the story.

It provides a trading platform and software services to brands, factories, and SMEs. Initially, the Singapore-based startup wanted to bring different large and small businesses online. “She was ‘put on leave’ with false complaints over her performance and threats against her reputation….”