Flush with Bt7-bn funding, Zilingo to tap new markets
Online shopping platform Zilingo has raised Bt7 billion in funding and this year expects 300 per cent revenue growth, while also expanding its business in Australia and Philippines in the third quarter.
Chief marketing officer Marita Abraham said Zilingo had raised Bt7 billion in investment funds, including from Sequoia Capital and Temasek, in February this year.
It also has direction to expand its online business in two new countries –Australia and Philippines – which are high potential growth markets with few competitors and high value markets.
“I think that the two new countries offer high potential for growth and with few e-commerce competitors. We will expand our business to support both business-to-business [B2B] and business-to-customers [B2C] sales. However, Thailand is an important market for us, ranking as the second biggest in the region. Meanwhile, the company’s highest market growth is in Indonesia, also the No 1 market in the region,” said Abraham.
She said Zilingo has a strategy to develop its merchant ecosystem to support both sellers or merchants and customers such as through a catalogue system, logistics and financial services, in order to create market efficiencies and help sellers to more quickly sell their products.
Future plans include developing benefits tools to help its customers make an easy decision, such as a policy that would allow them to buy now and return later, within 15 days.
The top-selling three products on its platform are women’s clothes, women’s bags and watch products. The online platform boasts over 100,000 products from more than 3,000 sellers or merchants across a wide area, including retailers at the Chatuchak Weekend Market. The main target customers are aged 18-36 and purchase an average US$50 (Bt1,580) per transaction.
Abraham said that the intersection of global fashion and lifestyles is more than $3 trillion in size and relies heavily upon merchants and suppliers in Asia.
The platform conducts promotion campaigns to keep customers coming, such as their 20 per cent cash-back programme.
Zilingo now runs businesses in 15 countries, including the US, China, India and Vietnam, and has launched an operation in Thailand. Revenues will grow 200-300 per cent this year over last, she said.
