Fashion platform Zilingo acquires Sri Lankan SaaS startup nCinga for $15.5M

Singapore’s fashion startup Zilingo has acquired Sri Lanka’s SaaS startup nCinga in a $15.5 cash and stock deal, the two said today.

Founded in 2014, nCinga offers an IoT platform to enable real-time production monitoring on factory floors and data analytics tools. Its acquisition is one of Sri Lanka’s largest tech exits in recent times, the two said.

Zilingo, which has built several pieces of supply chain — manufacturing, logistics, payments, etc. for retailers and brands, said it will deploy the Sri Lankan startup’s Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software across its network of 6,000 factories and 75,000 businesses.

Ankiti Bose, co-founder and chief executive of Zilingo, said nCinga’s product has helped the startup “drastically improve” efficiency and drive insights by digitizing the shop floor. “Their work has been crucial to our mission of creating a transparent, sustainable, economically viable and socially responsible apparel supply chain,” she said.

Zilingo “has long” been a client of nCinga, she said.

Retailers continue to struggle with meeting consumer demand for fast, responsibly produced products due to inefficiencies and information asymmetry, said Zilingo, which is steps away from becoming the latest Southeast Asian unicorn. The acquisition will enable it to help customers in the United States, Europe and Australia, where brands traditionally lack transparency over supply chain and manufacturing processes, it said.

Zilingo will also help to expand the reach of nCinga’s software to core fashion manufacturing markets, such as Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Turkey. In a statement, nCinga chief executive Imal Kalutotage said the startup “hopes to do great things together.”

The announcement today comes weeks after Zilingo said it planned to invest $100 million to expand its supply chain in the U.S.

It’s unclear how much capital nCinga had raised prior to today’s announcement. According to Crunchbase, nCinga’s last financing was its seed round five years ago.