Who is Ankiti Bose? A brief introduction.
Perhaps, many of us have not really heard of Ankiti Bose. She is the CEO and Co-Founder of a billion dollar company, Zilingo, which is an eCommerce platform for fashion and lifestyle products. This 27-year-old is one of Asia’s youngest female CEOs.
Ankiti Bose Education
She was born in 1992 ( Age 28 ) in Dehradun, moved from Dehradun to Mumbai and has completed her schooling at Podar School from Mumbai.
Ankiti excelled in her studies and completed her graduation from St Xavier’s College in Mumbai in Mathematics and Economics.
She further went for Summer Scholar at New York University, Stern School of Business.
Ankiti Bose Family
The striking feature of this young woman is her broad open smile and her infectious positivity that she is sure to rub on to anyone she meets.
While growing up the family was frequently on the move due to her father’s job as an engineer at a state-owned Oil Company.
Her mother who was a lecturer at a University left her job to bring to take care of Ankiti, their only child.
Her Career Start
After her studies at St. Xavier’s College, she joined as a Management Consultant in McKinsey & Company in 2012.
Thereafter she joined Sequoia Capital as an investment analyst.
This is where she gathered a very important experience and understanding that she required to set up the billion-dollar e-commerce platform which has grown with a tremendous rate globally.
How did it begin for Ankiti Bose? The story behind Zilingo.
The idea for an e-commerce platform started when Ankiti had travelled to Bangkok on a holiday in 2014. There she was intrigued by what she saw in the Chatuchak market.
The local designers were extremely skilled and customers came in flights just to shop the market. But the local entrepreneurs lacked the means and understanding of the digital media because of which they were not able to go global despite the fact that they had so much potential.
Once back home on a chance meeting with her neighbour Dhurv Kapoor she got talking about what she saw in Bangkok and the possible potential it holds. This conversation laid the foundation for the Zilingo Company.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bwj0ArlgaPC
Both Ankiti and Dhruv Kapoor (co-founder) quit their present jobs and put in total capital of $60,000 and started off the effort to help the small merchants make a stand against the bigger brands in fashion. Ankiti strongly believed that technology would help to provide a solution to these small businesses.
What is Zilingo Asian Mall (ZAM)?
Focused on US Market, Zilingo announced “ZAM : Zilingo Asian Mall” their expansion of B2B platform ZAM to launch in US.
Zilingo co-founder Ankiti Bose said (source): “The ZAM customer is anyone who makes or wants to make their own apparel, a retailer or re-seller, or the procurement people in mid to large-size fashion brands.
“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.”
The struggle of Ankiti Bose’s life :
In order to have a better understanding of the market and to make Zilingo as friendly as possible towards the merchants, they themselves signed up as merchants to get the user experience.
This was not a business that was set up on order and command, Zilingo was set up with every bit of personal experience as possible to make it what it is now.
Soon after starting Ankiti and her team realized that having just an e-commerce platform was not enough to help these small scale businesses. They lacked to a great extent in the manufacturing, logistics and other services that a bigger business has access to.
This is when Zilingo decided to provide an online market platform and it needed much to empower the small businesses.
They developed software to introduce supply chain capabilities and helped the businesses with design and product development, logistics, data analytics and customer service in 2016.
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The same year to boost their opportunities on a global platform Ankiti moved to Singapore.
By 2017 Zilingo started offering financial services as well which gave a new meaning to the company and its objectives allowing to, “unlock massive value across the fashion supply chain by connecting the highly fragmented landscape”.
Ankiti Bose ‘Zilingo’ Net Worth
This is a step by step process that excelled for the company since its inception to grow from a mere $60,000 venture to a near $1 billion company.
It has been a learning process for both the co-founders that have made them realize the possibilities and potential of their dreams and small businesses.
The journey so far has been filled with ups and downs but Ankiti Bose says that she has a different approach to dealing with anxiety and stress.
She claims to be a pathologically positive person who never lets any failure put down her spirit.
She believes that when you are trying so many different things something is bound to work, and you will figure it out. She also believes in her saying, “So you need to be extremely positive and resilient.”
Ankiti’s Achievements
- Featured in Forbes magazine’s Top 30 Under 30 Asia – 2018 List
- Featured in Tatler Generation 2019 T Honours list > Fashion & Beauty
- Featured in Fortune – 40 Under 40 – 2019 List
- Featured in The Bloomberg 50 – 2019
Today Ankiti’s dream has reached a clear realization. Her company serves more than 30,000 merchants across 14 countries in Asia, and the United States and is soon to launch in Australia as well.
Zilingo which is a play on the word “Zillion” is on its way to Unicorn status with a valuation of $970 million after raising $226 million in its most recent funding round.
The faith that the world has on Ankiti and her potential is quite evident.
Read : Meet the Bold and Beautiful CEO of Parle Agro : Schauna Chauhan Saluja
Ankiti’s Motivation and Driving Force
Ankiti’s main strength is in her passion and her drive to realize her dream to empower others. She fights for the smaller businesses to help them bring their products to a global marketplace at par with the bigger players in the fashion and lifestyle industry.
In an interview for her cover story in Prestige Online,
Ankiti says, “You can’t just change their lives; you have to change their lives so much that they won’t shift back to their old behavior.”
In addition to that Ankiti works to empower women in the corporate field. Despite her busy schedule, Ankiti takes out time to coach and mentor other young women entrepreneurs. Her zeal to help women is apparent in the number of “she bosses” that she employs across global centres in her company.
She believes that girls will pull each other up and you got to stand by each other. Ankiti says that women around the world tend to undervalue themselves when in reality they are worth much more.
She intends to rebel against the system and make a difference in a system where the weaker is almost always up against a bigger player just like a woman in a tech world.
She says, “Power is always very concentrated and it’s impossible to change the world in one go. But I want to try and do what I can.”
Ankiti strongly believes that if you give care then you will get it in return. Investing in people can help to get amazing results.
We are so Proud of Our #BrownGirl
In an Insta story she shared one of her Motivational incident about being brown how her confidence was broken in School :
“Both @abrmarita and I grew up in an age where being “fair” was being “lovely”. I’ve felt somehow smaller, weaker, told I was not “traditionally pretty” and called many names in school and it really broke my confidence.
A boy I had a crush on when I was a teen once told me he would not go out with a girl “so much darker than him“. It hurt a lot and took incredible effort to become resilient to.
It’s taken years, infact decades, to see that our #brownrang is not a bug but a feature!
Here’s hoping we can empower the next generation of girls to not need to feel “traditionally pretty” (whatever that means) to be confident and live their lives!”
Motivational Factor | Final words
Ankiti is a powerhouse of motivation and zeal. She intends to achieve not just for herself but wants to take all the people associated with her to the heights that she has dared to dream of. Her positivity is infectious and so is her smile and energy.
Ankiti’s in her Latest 2020 interview giving Motivational message to Young Indian Girls :
It has been a short but an upward journey for Zilingo. She is yet to achieve more as she sets up her team to put in their best by giving them all the support that they want. She lives what she believes in and you just cannot in any way put down her spirit. She is after all a “Pathologically positive person.”
