Co-Founder of Zilingo, Sues Angel Investor Over Defamatory Article on Indian Start-ups

Image Source: DNA

Ankiti Bose, the co-founder of Singapore-based e-commerce startup Zilingo, has sued angel investor Mahesh Murthy for publishing allegedly defamatory content against her. In an article on fraud in the Indian startup ecosystem, Murthy listed Zilingo among start-ups accused of fraud, prompting Bose to file the lawsuit seeking an injunction to restrain him from publishing any defamatory content.

Bose alleged that the article was part of a malicious media campaign to ruin her reputation, and the allegations were fictitious and baseless. Bose, 31, completed her schooling at Mumbai’s Cambridge School and studied mathematics and economics at Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College.

She worked at McKinsey & Company and Sequoia Capital before co-founding Zilingo in 2015. The startup connects wholesale buyers with sellers and had secured $226 million in funding at a valuation of $970 million in 2019. Bose ran a program in Indonesia that trained women to create clothing and set up training programs to make and support new leaders across the country. Last year, Bose resigned from the directorships of the company and its subsidiaries after being suspended by the company over alleged financial irregularities.

She called her suspension a witch hunt, saying that despite her requests, the Zilingo board had failed to show her any report related to any investigation into the company or into her alleged misconduct, and why or how these were used to terminate her position as CEO. Despite the controversy, Bose remains a trailblazer for women in the Southeast Asian startup scene

Re-reported from the story originally published in DNA