BUILDING A UNICORN
The CEO Magazine Asia|May 2021
AS CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS ECOMMERCE PLATFORM ZILINGO, ANKITI BOSE IS ON TRACK TO BEING THE FIRST INDIAN WOMAN TO FOUND A BILLION-DOLLAR STARTUP – ALL BEFORE HER 30TH BIRTHDAY.
JULIE COOPER
BUILDING A UNICORN

When it comes to entrepreneurship, Ankiti Bose is something of a legend. Thanks to the rapid success of Zilingo – the business-to-business ecommerce platform that she co-founded with Dhruv Kapoor in 2015 – she’s on the fast track to becoming the first Indian woman to found a billion-dollar startup. And she’s only 29 years old.

To make it that big that fast – she co-founded Zilingo when she was 23 – it would seem as though entrepreneurship was in her DNA. But that’s actually not the case. Ankiti’s upbringing was surprisingly humble. Her mother was a college lecturer and her father worked for the government; a stint that saw Ankiti moving from one small Indian city to another.

So how did this down-to-earth, former McKinsey & Company management consultant make the fateful leap into entrepreneurship? In her words, “foolish courage”.

“There was a lot of foolish courage involved in starting up,” Ankiti tells The CEO Magazine. “It was a decision completely driven by passion and optimism. I saw the opportunity in South-East Asia; the growth of the region looked like it could be phenomenal because it was super under-penetrated. But had I over-analysed the situation, it would’ve been harder to make the decision.”

この記事は The CEO Magazine Asia の May 2021 版に掲載されています。

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この記事は The CEO Magazine Asia の May 2021 版に掲載されています。

7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。

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