Singapore-based e-commerce start-up Zilingo is a winner from the US-China trade war
- The trade dispute has benefited more than 4,000 factories that the company currently works with in Southeast Asia
The US-China trade war is good news for e-commerce start-up Zilingo.
Singapore-based Zilingo, founded in 2015 by Ankiti Bose and Dhruv Kapoor, operates an online business-to-business platform that connects suppliers in the fashion industry directly with brands, which reduces the cost of production because the middlemen are removed. The higher US tariffs on China-made goods has accelerated the garment manufacturing industry’s move out of China to countries in Zilingo’s backyard, Southeast Asia.
“Countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Cambodia and Indonesia have become manufacturing hubs [for fashion], so it’s a very opportune time,” said Ankiti Bose, chief executive at Zilingo, in an interview last week.
“There’s a little bit of a window of opportunity, when people don’t want to source from China immediately [because of the trade war],” she said. “These other countries are plugging the gap very fast, and we’re enabling that and benefiting directly.”
