Singapore-based fashion marketplace Zilingo has appointed a liquidator to wind up the firm, according to filings on Singapore’s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (Acra).
EY Corporate Advisors has been appointed as provisional liquidator as seen in a filing dated January 18 and signed by Zilingo board members Koru Partners’s Plern Suraphongchai, Burda Principal Partners’s Neil Fong, and Sequoia Capital India’s Sandeep Kher.
A meeting with creditors, including Indies Partners and Varde Partners, will also take place on February 10, which will see the board lay a full statement of affairs at Zilingo, disclosing its assets, liabilities, a list of creditors, and the estimated amount of their claims.
DealStreetAsia has reached out Zilingo’s board for comment.
The move to liquidate comes nearly a year after the Zilingo’s board launched an internal probe and sacked its CEO, Ankiti Bose, over an alleged mishandling of finances. Since then, Zilingo’s operations and team have whittled away as the board struggled to align competing interests over the fate of the firm.
Most of the Zilingo’s founding team, including Bose and ex-COO Aadi Vaidya, are no longer with the firm. Dhruv Kapoor, who currently acts as Zilingo’s CTO, is its last operationally active founding member and was still seeking funds from investors in a desperate attempt to resuscitate the firm sometime in Sept-Oct.
Zilingo, once hailed as a rising venture star from Southeast Asia, had raised over $310 million in venture money from institutional investors such as Sequoia Capital India, Temasek Holdings, and Burda Principal Investments.
One of the key issues of contention was the way Zilingo recognised revenue on its books, including seller discounts and incentives. Zilingo has yet to file its financial statements with ACRA for two years (2020 and 2021).
The allegations and investigation have raised questions about the timing and Zilingo’s investors’ supposed ignorance of the startup’s financial troubles. Sequoia Capital India, which had to grapple with a series of corporate governance issues in portfolio firms, including BharatPe, Trell, and Zetwerk, this year, has also been under scrutiny.