Marsplay, one of its kind community-led commerce platform, has bagged an undisclosed amount in its pre-Series A round of funding. The round was led by Venture Highway with participation from Alvin Tse from Xiaomi, Jonathan Lau, partner at Cadorna Ventures, personal offices of Shailesh Rao, a partner with TPG Growth, and Nikhil Mohta, director at ICICI Venture.
New-Delhi-based platform plans to use the funds to build its product engineering team and build a strong creator community.
Misbah Ashraf, co-founder, Marsplay, said, “We envisioned a platform that provided easy-to-shop fashion advice on ‘What to wear’ and ‘When to wear’ that was crowdsourced from a community passionate about fashion and beauty. We see our relationship with this crucial community as a symbiotic one – not only do we provide them with a platform to build their personal brand, but also the one with the tools to monetise their creativity.”
Marsplay was founded by Misbah Ashraf and Ayush Shukla in 2017. The firm revolutionizes fashion shopping, by moving it away from catalogues to a personalized, curated, visual feed of fashion trends from your circle of acquaintances and your local community.
The community fully captures local and personal aesthetic influences to give users a more relevant shopping experience.
Samir Sood, founder at Venture Highway, said, “Fashion-led product discovery has been shifting away from ecommerce websites to social networks, however, the discovery to purchase process is still disconnected. More consumers are now seeking inspiration for fashion trends from people who are more relatable than celebrity influencers. In Marsplay, we have found a single platform that provides users with a seamless discovery of fashion trends and the ability to purchase their chosen product with a single click.”
“Fashion trends, ideas, and inspirations are often derived from people rather than brands. Consumers look up to their favourite influencers not just for the relatable content but content that aids their buying decisions. At Marsplay, we believe in empowering every single person to be a brand of their own and build the most humane way for millennials to shop online,” added Ayush Shukla, Co-founder, Marsplay.