Zilingo Opens Opportunities to Expand Offline Segments and Establish Fintech Services

Fashion-only e-commerce service Zilingo revealed the possibility to enter the offline segment this year in anticipation of the challenges in the dynamic world of technology.

Zilingo Co-Founder and CEO Ankiti Bose said the offline segment is the most important part that touches consumers. Therefore, his party wants to take advantage of this with a more creative approach.

"In my opinion, in the future it will not be completely online, offline will be the best way in terms of consumer experience," he said at the 2019 Indonesia PE-VC Summit, yesterday (24/1).

There is no possibility of which countries Zilingo will target if he wants to realize the plan. Ankiti predicts that in the future, Indonesia will become the main contributor to Zilingo's business, both from B2B and B2C.

Not only that, Zilingo plans to build a service in-house fintech which is intended for credit loan assistance and payment systems to merchants.

Quoted from DealStreet Asia, Ankiti explained that his party has built a whole layout that allows financial support to all merchants throughout the supply chain. This fintech service is part of Zilingo's long-term plan which will be built in-house.

Zilingo serves more than 20 thousand merchants and retailers across the B2B and B2C segments in Southeast Asia. Without going into details, Ankiti said that more than half of Zilingo's business was contributed by B2B.

One of Zilingo's B2B businesses is Zilingo Asia Mall (ZAM) to target markets in the United States and Europe. Zilingo has been present in Indonesia since last year and is actively conducting marketing activities in TV commercials. Besides Indonesia, Zilingo has business bases in Thailand and Singapore.

This O2O concept was previously carried out by fashion e-commerce players in Indonesia. Some of them that are quite aggressive are HijUp and Berrybenka.

HijUp also has eight offline outlets spread across Jakarta, Padang, Lombok, Palembang, and so on. Even HijUp is already present in Malaysia and followed in London. Meanwhile, Berrybenka now has 25 offline outlets, some of which are located in shopping centers.