Letter to readers: Zilingo sees huge losses, achieves ‘better unit economics’

Dear readers,

Our biggest story last week was a look at near-unicorn Zilingo’s financial statements, which showed a significant increase in both revenue and losses from 2018 to 2019.

What stood out was how its marketing budget exceeded revenue – we’ll see if that pays off in 2020.

The business-to-business marketplace declined to respond to our questions, but three days after the article was published, Zilingo’s chief operating officer put out a note saying that it is now seeing “significantly better unit economics.” This came about after a series of layoffs, in which the company lost 5% and then another 12% of its staff.

Reading financial statements has become something of a pastime for us here at Tech in Asia. It seems boring, but I’ve grown to like it. In fact, we’re committed to parsing these long reports so that you don’t have to.

Sometimes, we combine our analysis of financial reports with in-depth reporting, such as this story about Circles Life’s secret cash cow. Articles like this are the best of both worlds.

You can read all our earnings-related insights here. You’ll need a subscription to gain full access to those stories, but consider it an investment in Asian tech journalism.

Also, we continued our series of landscape reports last week, this time focusing on the rising and major players in Vietnam’s ecommerce scene. We hope you’ll find it useful.

We’ll be stepping off the gas pedal here at the newsroom over the next couple of weeks as we take a break and celebrate the holidays.

That said, we’ll all be working on rotation, so expect more news and premium content to come out as we keep an eye on key developments in the space.

Have a Merry Christmas!

Cheers,

Terence Lee
Editor-in-Chief