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Zilingo: She's set to become India's first female unicorn founder | CNBC Make It - YouTube
Channel: CNBC International
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Beautiful clothes here.
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So can you tell me a little
bit about some of these?
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This is Ankiti Bose.
Sheās 27, a fashion junkie
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and on course to become the first Indian
woman to co-found a billion dollar start-up.
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I think to be an entrepreneur, or to do anything,
you have to be a pathological optimist.
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Bose is CEO of online fashion
marketplace Zilingo.
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She started the business with her neighbour,
Dhruv Kapoor, back in 2015, when she was just 23.
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We were neighbours. Literally, it was unit
302 and 303, and we had never met.
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But my flatmate invited his
flatmate over for a beer,
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and neither of us was
actually supposed to be there.
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That casual get together in Bangalore gave
birth to what would eventually become Zilingo.
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And in four short years has grown it into a global
platform with more than seven million active users.
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Iāve come to Zilingoās HQ in
Singapore to find out more.
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Ankiti, tell me, how
did this all start?
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It was 2014, and I was on a holiday
with some friends in Bangkok.
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And we were in this market called Chatuchak,
which has over 8,000 small stores, designers.
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And I was like, "Wow, this
stuff should be online."
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But they just couldnāt sell online,
they didnāt know how to.
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And that was the inception.
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At the time, Bose was working in
India as an investment analyst
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for venture capital
firm Sequoia Capital.
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The fact that I was working in venture capital
and consulting before that definitely played
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an important role in shaping our opinions on
what would work and what would not work.
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But as she closely followed the tech space,
she was keen to do something of her own.
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We started spending a lot of time with merchants
and we realized that there were some gaps, right.
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So, everybody was solving
for access to the internet.
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But what about everything else that goes
on before you actually sell the product?
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So when she met Kapoor and found their skill
sets well-matched, she decided to go all in.
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We knew what we wanted to
do together was the same.
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It was really quite serendipitous.
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The business initially started by listing products
from merchants across Southeast Asia.
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But now works with businesses
in 15 regions globally.
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The business also has around
500 employees in eight countries.
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We have 25-year-olds,
we have 50-year-olds.
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Everybodyās leading initiatives that
theyāre really passionate about,
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and I really like to get behind that
and that makes all the difference.
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Zilingo, which is a play
on the word āzillions,ā
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has fueled that growth with
$308 million worth of investment.
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Plus $30,000 each from
both Bose and Kapoor.
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At the close of its series D funding round in February
2019, that valued the company at $970 million.
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With revenues having grown four times in the
past year, investors suggest that could put
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the company on for a $1 billion
valuation in the coming months.
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We donāt put as much emphasis and importance
on some of the more glamorous labels.
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But I still think itās a huge
achievement and just helps us
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think more about how big and
audacious this whole thing can be.
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That would be all the more impressive given
that India recently ranked
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as one of the least accommodating
countries for women entrepreneurs.
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Ankitiās success is an
important milestone.
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This is Leanne Robers, founder of She Loves Tech,
a global platform for women tech entrepreneurs.
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I spoke to her about what Boseās
achievement could mean for others.
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Leanne, why do you think Ankitiās
achievement is important?
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Well, today thereās such
an underrepresentation
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of women in technology and
women in entrepreneurship.
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And itās really important to have female role models
like Ankiti, because you canāt be what you canāt see.
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Look at the example of running
a mile in four minutes.
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Back in the day, people thought that it
was physically impossible for a human
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to break the barrier of running
a mile in less than four minutes.
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Until, Roger Bannister
did it in 1954.
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And after he did it, he broke this perceived
barrier, and the floodgates just opened up.
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In the same way that Bannister broke barriers
for runners, I hope Ankiti will do the same
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for women and encourage more women to enter
into entrepreneurship, especially in Asia.
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And for Bose, that would be
the real success story.
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One of the things that we didnāt
have as much growing up
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was role models in tech and
new, innovative industries.
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And we want to make sure that maybe the next
generation doesnāt have that problem.
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