Zilingo Develops Mini Manufacturing to Help Women Fashion Entrepreneurs

Platform E-commerce Zilingo is now developing a manufacturing concept for micro circles to expand its B2B business under brandZilingo Asia Mall (ZAM). The company targets women micro-entrepreneurs at the grassroots level to participate in it.

Zilingo Co-Founder & CEO Ankiti Bose explained, this concept is contained in SheWorkz, a decentralized manufacturing program specifically targeting women micro entrepreneurs. Indonesia became the first country to launch the initiative. In the first phase, it will be available in Jakarta, Cirebon and Tasikmalaya.

Ankiti hopes that the presence of the mini factory can maintain fashion supply, as well as encourage women to start careers as entrepreneurs. This is because women are under-represented in the global economic landscape.

He said, in Southeast and South Asia, the number of women in the workforce is only 31% of the total workforce and contributes 24% to GDP. This is not only a social problem, but also an economic problem.

"SheWorkz's initial idea was to help women become entrepreneurs, with the help of technology they can scaling and get capital assistance. They can also work from home, so they are flexible. This was the initial idea," explained Ankiti some time ago at the launch of the SheWorkz program.

He explained that Indonesia is the most important country for Zilingo because of its fastest growth compared to other countries. It is claimed that every time Zilingo sets an achievement target for ZAM it is always exceeded. Unfortunately, Ankiti did not include supporting data.

Therefore, Indonesia became the first country. Next, it will be rolled out to other countries, such as Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, and India.

In more detail, Zilingo will identify four to five women from the same area and group them according to skill level. The company's target is to train 300 women at this early stage.

They will be given a business loan (KUR) of around $5 thousand-$10 (Rp70,9 million-Rp140 million) from banking partners (Bank Mandiri, BNI, BRI). Then, will produce clothes on demand brand and connected to the Zilingo platform.

It is connected with a system to match their skills, availability and specialization on demand brand. There are at least 60 thousand brand global apparel that supplies its needs through the company.

"The same system can also monitor output, speed and quality, as well as identifying where further training may be needed."

Ambition to be the biggest fashion cloud factory

The ambition that Zilingo wants to achieve through the SheWorkz program is to become a factory-based provider cloud biggest in the world, especially fashion. The vision and mission, each brand, entrepreneurs and manufacturers of all sizes can be part of the company.

He emphasized that Zilingo does not have its own factory to focus its B2B business. Instead, companies partner with existing factories, providing them with the technology they need. Whether it's technology for procurement, logistics, invoice, billing, payment systems, and so on.

"We matching needs brand and supply from factories globally. For example, brand America can now take advantage resource from factories in Indonesia. This can push the export side and make export relations between the two countries easier."

There are more than 6 thousand factories that have been connected and utilize technology from Zilingo. It is not stated how many of them are in Indonesia.

The practice of exporting from Indonesian factories has begun to occur through companies. Ankiti explained that many Indonesian factories export to Malaysia for Muslim clothing products. There is also a translucent to the United States.

Overall, without going into more detail, it is claimed that B2B growth is significant and unprecedented over the past year. In B2B, he claims to have no competitors. Instead, they gather all fashion sellers, who sell on any online channel, to become users on Zilingo.

Unlike the case in B2C, especially in Indonesia, the competition is very tight and requires a large amount of capital to be at the forefront.

From the series D funding obtained this year, he emphasized that the company will focus on technology development in three areas, namely supply chain leaders, financing, and data science. "In fact, we don't have too many spelt investment into B2C, in fact more into B2B. These three areas need the most investment for our B2B business," he concluded.