Singaporean Apparel Tech Firm Zilingo Eyes $200M Fundraise

Zilingo Pte, a Singaporean state-backed provider of tech services used by companies that make and sell clothing, is looking to raise $150 million to $200 million, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources.

The company started as the operator of a fashion marketplace targeting customers across Southeast Asia before pivoting to offer services.

The company’s website breaks Zilingo’s business into three categories: marketing, FinTech and logistics. The services are branded as Ztrade, to source apparel fabrics; Zfactory, to improve factory operations; and Zconnect, to offer omnichannel, inventory and marketing services.

Annual sales exceed $1 billion, according to Zilingo.

If successful in its fundraising efforts, Zilingo, which is working with Goldman Sachs, could see its valuation reach $200 million, Bloomberg reported. The news service noted that people familiar with the fundraising effort said the amount sought could change.

The company, which was founded in 2015, was valued at $970 million in 2019 at the time of a $226 million fundraise that included investors Temasek and Sequoia Capital.

Goldman Sachs and Zilingo declined to comment.

According to Zilingo, existing investors include edbi, SIG Ehanna, Koru,Beenext, Sofina, BurdaPrincipal and Amadeus Capital Partners, in addition to Sequoia and Temasek.

In an interview published on Zilingo’s website, co-founder Ankiti Bose said the steps that led to the company’s rapid growth appeared risky at the time she and colleagues took them.

“Scaling down our business-to-consumer [B2C] business is definitely one of the toughest decisions we have made recently,” she said.

Prior to launching Zilingo, Bose was an investment analysis at Sequoia Capital. Co-founder Dhruv Kapoor was a software engineer at Kiwi Inc.