Meet Ankiti Bose, the former CEO of Zilingo who was let go from her $7 billion company
Within the Indian startup scene, Ankiti Bose is a well-known figure. Her achievement as the previous CEO of Zilingo was astounding. She did, however, also become one of the few successful Indian business owners to be fired from their own firm.
Ankiti Bose attended Cambridge School in Mumbai after attending Dehradun as a child. She then received her degree from Mumbai’s St. Xavier’s College. She worked for large corporations like Sequoia Capital and McKenzie & Company after graduating from college. She discovered that many small store owners in Bangalore were required to go online while perusing the local market. She founded Zilingo, her own business, after coming to this realization and leaving her position as an investment analyst at Sequoia Capital.
Zilingo is a technology and commerce platform founded by Ankiti and her friend Dhruv Kapoor. The market value of the firm has skyrocketed to Rs 7,000 crore by 2019. Due to her accomplishments, she was included in Fortune’s 40 under 40 and Bloomberg’s Top 50 lists in 2019, as well as Forbes Asia’s 30 under 30 list in 2018.
Nevertheless, Ankiti lost her job as Zilingo’s CEO in 2022. An investor in the firm named Mahesh Murthy even went so far as to sue Ankiti Bose in an attempt to recover Rs 738 crore. She was charged by the firm with mismanagement and financial fraud.
She reportedly increased her pay tenfold without the board’s consent. According to the findings, around Rs 83 crore was given without the necessary documents. Based on these claims, the company’s investors proceeded with a lawsuit worth more than Rs 700 crore.
According to sources, Ankiti reportedly upped the salaries of her co-founder Dhruv Kapoor and Chief Operating Officer Aadi Vaidya by 10 times, 3 times, and 7 times, respectively, between 2017 and 2019. She reportedly received a pay increase from SGD 5,500 in 2017 to SGD 58,900 in 2019.
As to Bloomberg, Ankiti Bose’s role as CEO was placed on hold on March 31, 2022. Then, she received an official notice of termination from Zilingo on May 20, 2022.
