In Southeast Asia, the fashion industry tends to be very fragmented. There are plenty of small, independent merchants selling clothes, shoes, and accessories in shopping centres but these sellers don’t have the resources to build their own e-commerce website.
Zilingo, which launched in January 2015, is helping small shops bridge this gap with a mobile app platform that offers back-end support, including features that make it easy to upload product listings, manage inventory, and deal with customer service.
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Zilingo gets a 10% – 20% commission on each transaction and does not charge a listing fee. It has 2,000 sellers on the platform, 500,000 registered users, and does between 30,000 and 40,000 transactions per month.
The company just landed $8 million Series A funding led by Sequoia India, with additional funding from other Southeast Asian VCs.
It is planning on adding a Snapchat-like in-app video tool and artificial intelligence to incorporate visual search and personalisation.
(Source: Fast Company)