Zilingo, a play on the word ‘Zillions’, is an online e-commerce platform for selling fashion products and was founded by Ankiti Bose and Dhruv Kapoor in Bangkok in 2015. Established with the vision of providing the small seller in South East Asia with an efficient online platform to sell their products, Zilingo had grown 25% month-on-month in its second year of operation.
The Zilingo e-commerce platform is driven by data analytics-driven research tools to enable small sellers to target demand from customers and drive sales efficiently. Reports generated by the platform encompass buyer statistics, supplier statistics, fashion trends and buyer preferences. Suppliers can manage logistics through third-party logistics partners available on the platform, and better sell their products by using the myriad tools available on the mobile-friendly app to upload images of their products, manage inventory, schedule pickups, track orders, consult on price-setting, and even liaise with third-party loan providers.
Zilingo had also built a significant consumer base by December 2017, with seller hubs in Hong Kong, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and China. The company had also proved to be one of the fastest growing e-commerce businesses in South East Asia and had been able to raise substantial funding (US$27 million) within its first two years of operation. In April 2018, the company had raised US$ 54 million in funding, making it among the top ten funded startup companies in Singapore. The company has also launched its B2B product in the US market in line with its market strategy of quickly growing its customer base as well as its geographic base.
Zilingo had satisfied several sources of innovation in entrepreneurship in context to Drucker’s theory of innovation. However, was this enough to keep the company in the growth track? Moreover, was rapid growth the right strategy for the company? Bose knew that her company had fared well so far in a competitive market. However, how could her company further expand its consumer base? What could be Zilingo’s competitive strategy?
This case looks into the sources of innovation in entrepreneurship and exemplifies how incongruity in an existing market can create avenues for new ventures to be successful. The case also tries to highlight how harnessing on the power of data analytics capabilities of an e-commerce platform can help an online business create value-added tools and services for its customers and suppliers.
Harnessing the Power of Data Analytics with (R)
As the analytics and graphics software of choice for data scientists, R is preferred for its ability to facilitate analysis and make effective presentations.
R is highly adaptable in that statistical functionalities can be added and more data points can be handled as needed. Coding in R is also comparatively easy, in that coding can be written in cloud-based parallels without having to purchase high-end computers. R can easily handle large sets of data, and is readily incorporated with online platforms to create apps for analytics.
Using R offers several advantages, such as its widespread use among researchers and analysts; its straightforwardness as a programming language, and its comprehensive array of tools for manipulating and wrangling data. On top of making data easy to visualise and analyse, R also makes it easy for new statistical methods to be used, and machine learning to be implemented.
R is also open-source or free to use, making it cost-efficient, widely accessible, and highly scalable on an individual, organisational and industrial level.
Now while R should be relatively simple to learn for those familiar with popular spreadsheet programs, how quickly you pick it up depends on your prior mastery of programming and statistics. Other challenges involved in learning R include its huge computer memory requirements and having to make copies of the data being processed.
To help you overcome these challenges, SMU Academy offers hands-on opportunities for sharpening your R skills along with real-world data-sets and cases. The Academy’s Certified Data Analytics (R) Specialist course comprises six modules and a capstone, practical problem-solving project. Find out how you can earn your certificate, now.
Originally published by the SMU Centre for Management Practice, 11 Dec 2018 by Reddi Rayalu Kotha and Lipika Bhattacharya. Access the case in full here.
