Delhi-based EkAnek on Monday raised $5.4 million (around INR 40 crore) in a Series A1 round led by UAE’s Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI) Fund, a $300 million venture fund managed by Falcon Edge Capital. The round also saw participation from EkAnek’s existing investors including Matrix Partners India, Sequoia Capital India, and Lightspeed India.
EkAnek is the parent company of the newly-launched beauty and grooming e-commerce startup Foxy. The company in a press release highlighted that the fresh funds will be deployed towards expanding Foxy’s presence in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The company said that the Emirate will be the global base for Foxy’s international expansion to the GCA, MENA and other regional markets. Additionally, EkAnek plans to hire and build a team of data scientists, product managers, and engineers in Abu Dhabi.
Founded in 2018 by IIT Kharagpur graduate Chandranshu, IIM Ahmedabad alumnus Kartik Sheth, and IIT Delhi graduate Sachin Singhal, EkAnek provides its brand partners with a full-stack solution to drive D2C operations. This includes curation, brand logistics, marketing tools, influencer networks, and video commerce. The company was recently selected in the 2020 cohort for Google for Startups Accelerated India.
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Foxy offers personalised shopping experiences incorporating selfie-analysis, targeted curation, and differentiated fulfillment. EkAnek already has more than 120 brand and over 6,000 beauty and grooming influencers on its platform.
Speaking of the development for EkAnek, Navroz Udwadia, Cofounder of Falcon Edge Capital, said,
“Foxy will offer mobile-first consumers a differentiated approach to supply, curation, and fulfilment of beauty products. In addition, EkAnek’s unique B2B2C full-stack offering will drive tighter brand relationships with the platforms and consumers to offer consumers globally an unrivalled experience of beauty products.”
Sharing his thoughts, GV Ravishankar, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India LLP, said,
“In India’s rapidly expanding lifestyle market, purchase decisions are increasingly being driven by personalised content and relevant influencers, especially in non-metros. Kartik’s deep experience in having built large brands and FOXY’s highly personalised commerce-through-content strategy uniquely positions them to capture this fast growing space, putting them on an accelerated path to value creation.”
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