Singapore's fallen tech star

Hi, this is Olivia Poh in Singapore. Ankiti Bose’s startup turmoil is already having ripple effects in the region’s tech scene. But first... [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hi, this is Olivia Poh in Singapore. Ankiti Bose’s startup turmoil is already having ripple effects in the region’s tech scene. But first... Today’s must-reads: • Snap’s stock plunged by 29%. [Here’s what]( its CEO said to staff • Coinbase’s rout [isn’t just]( about crypto prices • Zoom plans to expand [beyond video software]( Singapore loses a star It’s a saga that has rocked a city-state’s entire tech scene: As recently as two months ago, Ankiti Bose was Singapore’s preeminent startup leader. As of last week, she’s out of a job. Bose is the co-founder of Zilingo Pte, a startup with 500 employees in eight countries facilitating hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions through its fashion e-commerce platform. Bose—a young, charismatic female CEO in a [male-dominated industry](—once served as a shining example of the promise of the region’s startup potential, deftly headlining industry events for groups like the World Economic Forum, Harvard Business School and Forbes. She reached a level of celebrity few business leaders in Singapore have attained. Then disaster struck. In April, Bloomberg broke the news that [Bose had been suspended](, triggering an ugly but riveting dispute that lit up the region’s tech scene. In Singapore, where I live, her suspension was the main topic of countless WhatsApp chats in startup and investor circles. People were shell-shocked and worried about the ripple effects it would cause in the industry. My phone blew up with text messages on the evening the story broke. It ran out of battery several minutes later. One startup founder who'd worked with Zilingo was frantic about potential fallout. Others ranged from the "I told you so" type to genuine amazement and curiosity over what triggered Bose's fall. It was a stark reversal of sentiment around a company whose vision had been catnip to investors from all over the world. Zilingo struggled during the Covid-19 pandemic and then in March, the startup’s investors began an investigation into its financial practices. The inquiry centered on the way that Zilingo, which regulatory filings show had not filed annual financial statements since 2019, accounted for transactions and revenue across its platform, which spans thousands of small merchants. Already, the impact of the episode is being felt. Venture capitalists, once thrilled to write checks, are increasingly conducting extended due diligence into companies before they invest, taking their time to pore through the numbers for any sign of misrepresentation. Investors are also flying down to operation sites to speak with people on the ground. Term sheets, which at the height of the industry's exuberance took investors 24 hours to dole out, are being renegotiated and now take up to a month to finalize (according to at least one VC). Bose started out trying to help merchants in Bangkok's popular Chatuchak market gain visibility, and the company eventually connected thousands of small businesses to suppliers across the fragmented e-commerce landscape of Southeast Asia. Zilingo pulled in $226 million from investors including Sequoia Capital India and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings. Even Jay-Z’s VC fund invested. As the investigation got underway, the drama at Zilingo only intensified. Sequoia Capital India’s Shailendra Singh, one of the most prominent venture capitalists in the region, stepped down from the startup’s board. Creditors recalled their loans. And last Friday, the biggest blow landed: The fashion platform ousted Bose, the company’s first and only CEO, after allegations of serious financial irregularities. Bose has denied any wrongdoing and has hired an attorney to fight back against what she’s described as a “witch hunt.” She has argued that she is getting blamed for decisions and practices that were well known by senior managers and directors. Zilingo’s turn of fate is highly unusual in the burgeoning startup world of Southeast Asia, where the industry prides itself on a fast-moving corporate culture and rapid growth. And it doesn’t help that Zilingo's turbulence comes during a global tech stock rout. Investors around the world have become more discerning. The result may be a compounding negative impact for the region’s founders. Today, Zilingo is a shell of its former self. It has not announced a new leader and the future of the startup remains unclear. But what’s perhaps the most telling detail of this saga is that so few people realized anything was amiss until it was too late. According to several people familiar with the matter, Bose’s behavior was little different from other private-tech CEOs—which included skipping annual statements for two years. By many accounts, Zilingo was a high-profile, but run-of-the mill Singapore company. That, of course, makes its fate all the more chilling. —[Olivia Poh](mailto:opoh@bloomberg.net) The big story A Broadcom-VMware deal could be ready [as soon as this week](. The agreement would be one of the largest-ever tech sector takeovers, heralding a [new era of megadeals](. Meanwhile, Pat Gelsinger, VMware’s former CEO, [has mixed feelings]( about the acquisition. What else you need to know The bans can go on: A federal appeals court said it’s unconstitutional for Florida to stop social media platforms from [banning politicians](. Airbnb is shutting its operations in China, choosing to focus instead on [outbound Chinese tourism]( as the country continues its aggressive approach to containing Covid-19. 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