Zilingo, a fashion-tech startup that was once worth $1B, is officially undergoing liquidation.

It was a rare unicorn both in the fashion industry and in Singapore, that was led by a high-flying female CEO, Ankiti Bose.

She was the star of the show.

Flying around giving speeches at conferences and dishing out advice to wide-eyed founders who looked to her for inspiration.

Now, its being liquidated and the company is shutting down.

All love for the once majestic startup has evaporated.

“The liquidation process spells an end to a startup whose implosion and months-long battle for survival sent shock waves through South-east Asia and India’s tech industries. The once high-flying company pitched into a downward spiral after complaints of financial irregularities, culminating in the dismissal of high-profile co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Ankiti Bose in May.”

What went wrong?

It never has an easy answer everyone is looking for.

Financial irregularities?

That has so much to unpack.

Could be intention to defraud investors with fake user growth, misappropriation of funds and misleading shareholders .etc.

Bad management?

Could it be that superstardom and all the media exposure got to Ankiti’s head?

Could it be that she was far too inexperienced and ill-prepared to handle a company that was scaling too quickly?

Bad execution?

Was it that the team didn’t know how to execute their operations well enough?

Could it be that they got out-competed by other players and their margins and differentiating factors got eroded away slowly but surely?

Negative externalities?

Could it be that Covid destroyed their market?

Did it demolished demand and disrupted their supply chains too?

Failure to innovate?

Did they fail to adapt to consumer’s needs quickly?

Did they misread and made too many missteps with their expansion plans?

Hard questions indeed.

But when a startup of such size fail, it is usually never attributed to just one factor.

There are series of decisions and causations that led to the downfall.

Zilingo was backed by prominent VCs like Temasek and Sequoia Capital India.

Perhaps that gave other investors and the general public the sense that it was perfect when it wasn’t quite there yet.

Premature adoration leads to over-valuation and incredibly high expectations.

High expectations will force founders to use extreme measures to get extreme results.

Often times, that isn’t ideal or legal.

Those are the ingredients for disaster cake.

Sprinkle some founder issues, bad communications and infighting amongst the management and board, and you get an implosion.

It is never fun to see a potential unicorn in SEA go down.

We have so few to begin with, so we should cherish and nurture them as much as we can.

What we don’t want is to prop them up too high and kill them with over-expectations.

Let’s all be a bit more discerning shall we?

-

Are we expecting too much from Unicorn founders?

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#startups #business #startupx #growth #success #socialmedia #culture #entrepreneurship #strategy #eth #btc #crypto #web3 #ankitibose #zilingo #bearmarket #unicorn #southeastasia #discerning

Zilingo, a fashion-tech startup that was once worth $1B, is officially undergoing liquidation.

It was a rare unicorn both in the fashion industry and in Singapore, that was led by a high-flying female CEO, Ankiti Bose.

She was the star of the show.

Flying around giving speeches at conferences and dishing out advice to wide-eyed founders who looked to her for inspiration.

Now, its being liquidated and the company is shutting down.

All love for the once majestic startup has evaporated.

“The liquidation process spells an end to a startup whose implosion and months-long battle for survival sent shock waves through South-east Asia and India’s tech industries. The once high-flying company pitched into a downward spiral after complaints of financial irregularities, culminating in the dismissal of high-profile co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Ankiti Bose in May.”

What went wrong?

It never has an easy answer everyone is looking for.

Financial irregularities?

That has so much to unpack.

Could be intention to defraud investors with fake user growth, misappropriation of funds and misleading shareholders .etc.

Bad management?

Could it be that superstardom and all the media exposure got to Ankiti’s head?

Could it be that she was far too inexperienced and ill-prepared to handle a company that was scaling too quickly?

Bad execution?

Was it that the team didn’t know how to execute their operations well enough?

Could it be that they got out-competed by other players and their margins and differentiating factors got eroded away slowly but surely?

Negative externalities?

Could it be that Covid destroyed their market?

Did it demolished demand and disrupted their supply chains too?

Failure to innovate?

Did they fail to adapt to consumer’s needs quickly?

Did they misread and made too many missteps with their expansion plans?

Hard questions indeed.

But when a startup of such size fail, it is usually never attributed to just one factor.

There are series of decisions and causations that led to the downfall.

Zilingo was backed by prominent VCs like Temasek and Sequoia Capital India.

Perhaps that gave other investors and the general public the sense that it was perfect when it wasn’t quite there yet.

Premature adoration leads to over-valuation and incredibly high expectations.

High expectations will force founders to use extreme measures to get extreme results.

Often times, that isn’t ideal or legal.

Those are the ingredients for disaster cake.

Sprinkle some founder issues, bad communications and infighting amongst the management and board, and you get an implosion.

It is never fun to see a potential unicorn in SEA go down.

We have so few to begin with, so we should cherish and nurture them as much as we can.

What we don’t want is to prop them up too high and kill them with over-expectations.

Let’s all be a bit more discerning shall we?

-

Are we expecting too much from Unicorn founders?

-

#startups #business #startupx #growth #success #socialmedia #culture #entrepreneurship #strategy #eth #btc #crypto #web3 #ankitibose #zilingo #bearmarket #unicorn #southeastasia #discerning