Exclusive: Lightspeed-backed Foxy acquires Marsplay

EkAnek, which runs the beauty shopping and live video commerce app Foxy, has acquired community-led commerce platform Marsplay according to three Entrackr sources who also said that the deal materialised a few weeks ago.

“The transaction is likely to facilitate an exit for investors and will mark Foxy’s entry into the community commerce space,” said one of the sources on condition of anonymity. As of now, Foxy only focused on the video commerce part. “The size of the deal is in the range of Rs 8-10 crore.”

According to Tracxn data, the company was valued at over $4 million in its pre-Series A round led by Venture Highway in September 2019. Hence the deal seems to be a stressed one.

“The co-founders have left after the acquisition while the remaining team of Marsplay has joined Foxy,” said the person quoted above. The acquisition of Marsplay also reflects on Play Store where it’s listed under EkAnek along with its two other apps.

Founded by Misbah Ashraf and Ayush Shukla, Marsplay is a community-focused e-commerce platform for beauty and fashion accessories. Besides enabling discovery, it curates fashion looks and offers tips, tutorials including the insertion of product links on the web, Android and iOS platforms.

The three-and-a-half-year-old company has so far raised Rs 6.30 crore as capital. Its investors include Venture Highway and top-notch angels including former YouTube India head Amit Agrawal, CEO of Bounce Vivekananda Hallekere, TPG Growth Partners’ Shailesh Rao and ICICI Ventures’ Nikhil Mohta.

Foxy is a two-way direct to consumer (D2C) facing platform for brands and influencers. According to its website, the company has over 150 brands with 7500 influencers. It has raised over Rs 100 crore from top-tier venture capital firms including Sequoia, Lightspeed and Info Edge’s Alpha Wave Incubation.

Entrackr had exclusively reported Foxy’s $10 million seed round in 2019.

Immediate queries sent to Kartik Sethi, co-founder and CEO of Foxy, remain unanswered whereas Marsplay’s Ashraf declined to offer any comment for the story. 

“Marsplay was not in a healthy state and was finding it tough to raise capital for quite some time,” said the second person who also wished not to be named. “Merger or acquisition was the way forward for the company.” 

Its struggle could also be sensed from its traction. As per SensorTower data, it had barely amassed 80,000 downloads in the past eight months. Meanwhile, Foxy’s flagship beauty shopping app’s download numbers are under 800K.