S’pore’s Zilingo buys Lanka’s nCinga in landmark $ 15.5 m cash and stock deal

• Southeast Asian technology platform scales up global supply chain capabilities with acquisition of Sri Lanka’s Software-as-a-Service company
• Deal marks a major win for Sri Lanka’s startup ecosystem

Leading technology platform Zilingo has bolstered its position as a global digital supply chain enabler with its acquisition of Sri Lanka-based software company nCinga Innovations. 

The acquisition is being touted as one of the largest tech exits in Sri Lanka in recent memory. The deal marks a major win for Sri Lanka’s startup ecosystem, taking homegrown technology to the global stage. 

The acquisition will drive the adoption of Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software across Zilingo’s global network of 6,000 factories and 75,000 businesses, enabling access to previously untapped markets. 

Additionally, more Sri Lankan factories will now have access to Zilingo’s existing tech stack, including fintech services, bringing more businesses in the country on board the Industry 4.0 revolution.

Fashion is an over $ 3 trillion industry, in which a majority of retailers struggle with meeting consumer demand for fast, trendy and responsibly produced products due to inefficiencies and information asymmetry. To address this, Zilingo has created a full-stack technology platform that makes the supply chain fair, transparent and connected. The acquisition will bring added features to the company’s customers in the United States, Europe and Australia, where brands traditionally lack transparency over the supply chain and manufacturing processes.

“What excited us about the nCinga product was its ability to dramatically improve efficiency and drive insights by digitising the shop floor. We have partnered with them for a long time and their work has been crucial to our mission of creating a transparent, sustainable, economically viable and socially responsible apparel supply chain,” said Zilingo Co-Founder and CEO Ankiti Bose when speaking about the acquisition.

Zilingo is set to bring a digitisation opportunity to global manufacturing hubs like Bangladesh,

India, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Zilingo plans to leverage its global manufacturer network to increase distribution of the software, specifically for core fashion manufacturing markets such as Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Turkey among others.

“We at nCinga are very inspired by Zilingo’s vision. Both teams align along shared values and a global ambition to make the fashion and apparel industry fair, transparent and efficient. We hope to do great things together,” said nCinga Innovations Chief Executive Officer Imal Kalutotage.

Zilingo is a technology platform which powers the entire fashion supply chain. It was founded in 2015 by Bose and Dhruv Kapoor with a vision to use technology to put responsible and efficient business within everyone’s reach. Zilingo said that although the fashion industry was dominated by a select few, favouring only those with social, human and financial capital, it believed the future of fashion belonged to everyone. By using smart, technology-led solutions to bridge the gap between creators and producers, it revealed that it had reimagined the fashion supply chain to make it fair, connected and transparent for all.

nCinga believes in the power of data and recognises that the availability, visibility, usability, manageability and reliability of data is of the utmost importance to realising the power of data. As such, the company has put forth a platform where organisational data can be collected, integrated, connected, searched, visualised and analysed in real time.