B2B apparel e-commerce platform Zilingo raises 54 million dollars and expands into the U.S.

The Southeast Asian fashion startup has announced it has closed a 54 million dollars Series C funding round, what takes the total amount raised from investors to date to 82 million dollars.

The round was led by new investor Sofina — an investor in Flipkart-owned fashion site Myntra among others — and existing backers Burda and Sequoia India. Zilingo’s other existing investors, including Tim Draper, SIG, Venturra, Beenext and Manik Arora, all took part, as well as Amadeus Capital.

Zilingo last closed a fundraising in September 2017, when it secured 18 million dollars in a Series B round last September.

Singapore-headquartered Zilingo was launched three years ago now expanding into the U.S. with a new B2B online platform, Zilingo Asia Mall (ZAM).

Founded by Ankiti Bose and Dhruv Kapoor in October 2015, Zilingo was built to connect the highly fragmented fashion supply to fashion lovers across Asia. "While travelling across Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines, I saw the labyrinthine markets across this region selling all kinds of clothes offline - from slogan t-shirts to maxi dresses, from formal suits to leather loafers," said Bose in a recent interview. "It got me thinking as to why these merchants were not available online and that's where the idea of Zilingo sparked."

ZAM is the first fashion and lifestyle focused all-in-one procurement solution that provides a one-stop shop for sourcing competitive pricing, procurement, merchandising, quality control, customer care and flexible credit, all done with English speaking staff to cut the errors that come from language barriers.

Zilingo is using its own proprietary algorithms to track and project fast-moving, ever-changing, modular trends using AI – then aggregating upcoming trends to assist merchants and buyers. In addition to trend analysis, the platform also provides content and photography services, product sourcing, financial services and more advanced typically only reserved for large brands and retailers.

"The ZAM customer is anyone who makes or wants to make their own apparel, a retailer or reseller, or the procurement people in mid to large size fashion brands," said Bose to 'TechCrunch'. "Our team truly believes that no merchant is too big or too small to grow their business online and that every fashion label, big or small, should be placed on a level playing field."