A young Bengali woman owns 9 thousand crore rupees at the age of 27
September 27, 20242 Mins Read

International Desk: A young Bengali woman owns 9 thousand crore rupees at the age of 27! At the age of twenty-seven years, one Bangatnaya made the impossible possible. Her name is Ankiti Bose. He started the business with only 21 lakh rupees. In just four years, it swelled to 9,800 crores. When a company's business reaches $1 billion, it is named after a fictional animal called a unicorn. Ankiti's fashion e-commerce company Jilingo has already got it. Ankiti, co-founder and CEO of a unicorn company, became the youngest Indian woman to be elected.

Ankiti Bose

Although born in a Bengali family, Ankiti Bose grew up outside Bengal. In 2012, he studied Economics and Mathematics from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. After that, he started working in the Mumbai branch of McKinsey, an American consulting firm. From there he joined the Bangalore office of Sequoia Capitals, another US firm. At the age of twenty-three, he had a conversation with twenty-four-year-old Dhruv Kapoor in Bangalore. After graduating from IIT Guwahati, Dhruv worked as a software engineer at gaming studio Qiy Inc.

Both of them had dreams of leaving their jobs and doing something of their own. First they thought of opening an e-commerce site. But in India then companies like Flipkart, Amazon are sitting. They understood that they could not compete with them. So the thinking continues.

Ankiti's eyes were opened while visiting Bangkok that year. Entering the Chatuchak market there, he noticed clothes, shoes, bags and accessories made by local designers. He realizes that because of the language barrier, it is not possible for local business people to communicate them to outsiders. That's when the idea came to mind. Ankiti talks with Dhruva back home. They quit their jobs and started working with a capital of 21 lakh rupees.

But the journey was not easy. It took them almost a year to complete the market research. Ankiti started by developing interest in online business among traders by visiting the markets of Bangkok. Sitting in Bangalore, Dhruv started handling the technical side. They were interested in capturing the South Asian market. He started working like that. In the last four years, Jilingo has succeeded in capturing the markets of Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, China, Korea and Cambodia. Transactions have also started in India and Australia.

Ankiti, who was once an employee of Sequoia, has also invested USD 226 million in Zilingo. The investment is held by Tamsek Holding Pvt Ltd of Singapore. At the moment the CEO of Zilingo is Ankiti. He managed the company's headquarters in Singapore. Dhruv leads 100 workers in Bangalore. He is the chief technical officer (CTO) of the company.