Singapore's Zilingo debt holders recall loan; new finance adviser appointed

Fashion technology startup Zilingo's debtholders have decided to recall their entire loan, leading the Singapore-based company to appoint a financial adviser to assess options, its board said on Friday.

"Due to Zilingo's failure to fulfill prior obligations under the loan agreement, the company's lenders have made the decision to accelerate the repayment of the entire loan," Zilingo's board said in a statement to Reuters.

The board suspended its CEO and co-founder Ankiti Bose in March with the backing of major investors, pending a probe by an independent firm they hired.

Backed by investors including Sequoia Capital India and Singapore state investor Temasek, the seven-year-old Zilingo announced in April a probe into what it described as "matters", and which sources have said refers to the company's accounts.

"The investigation into allegations against Ankiti Bose, the CEO of Zilingo, is close to being finalised," the Zilingo board said in Friday's statement.

A lawyer for Bose has said that she declined to comment on her suspension or the investigation.

Zilingo works with thousands of apparel factories and merchants in South Asia and Southeast Asia, connecting them to retailers worldwide and was valued at nearly $1 billion in its last funding round in 2019, according to sources familiar with the situation.

The company was founded in 2015 by Bose and chief technology officer Dhruv Kapoor as a Southeast Asia focused e-commerce firm and then transformed into a global supply chain enabler for the highly fragmented apparel sector.

It provides logistics, financing and other services to factories and merchants.

(Reporting by Anshuman Daga; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and John Stonestreet)