In May 2022, Singapore-based fashion startup Zilingo fired its co-founder and CEO Ankiti Bose after an independent investigation into what the board called serious financial irregularities, destroying a company once valued at nearly US$1 billion and backed by Sequoia Capital India and Temasek.
Zilingo, founded in 2015 by Bose and chief technology officer Dhruv Kapoor, was a business-to-business fashion e-commerce platform once hailed as one of Southeast Asia's most promising startups. Its last funding round in 2019 valued it at close to US$1 billion. But the crisis began on 31 March 2022, when the board suspended Bose with the backing of major investors, pending a forensic probe by Kroll into complaints from an anonymous whistleblower.
On 20 May 2022, Zilingo announced it had terminated Bose's employment with cause, reserving the right to pursue legal action. Bose, then 30, told Reuters she had been wrongfully dismissed for insubordination involving lead investor Sequoia and its managing director Shailendra Singh, and that she had never been shown the findings of either Kroll or Deloitte, the latter appointed to probe harassment claims she had raised. She said she had informed the board in detail about years of harassment and duress, and vowed to pursue her rights against what she called a witch-hunt.
The company's finances were already in freefall. Zilingo had taken a US$40 million loan in July 2021; after the suspension, lenders recalled the entire loan, forcing the company to appoint a financial adviser. Attempts to raise US$150 to 200 million with Goldman Sachs collapsed.
Zilingo went into liquidation in January 2023, its technology assets sold to Switzerland's Buyogo AG. In April 2023, investor Burda Principal Investments said significant irregularities in reporting to investors had led to the failure, and that Kroll's work was complete, with investors still weighing legal action. Yet no lawsuit by Zilingo, its liquidators or its investors against Bose ever surfaced, no Singapore regulator announced action, and the Kroll report has never been released publicly.
The affair left uncomfortable questions for Singapore's startup ecosystem: a celebrated female founder publicly branded on the strength of an unseen report, US$308 million in investor money gone, and a forensic investigation whose findings remain locked away. Four years on, the silence from all sides remains the story.
Bose, who held an 8.58 per cent stake in the company, had reportedly reached out to firms including Varde Partners and Indies Capital about repaying the startup's outstanding US$40 million debt in full, a move some read as an attempt to regain control. The board countered that lenders had accelerated repayment after Zilingo failed to meet prior obligations under the loan agreement. With the company in liquidation and its technology assets sold, neither side's version of events has ever been tested in court.