Social media and commerce firm has raised an undisclosed amount in its seed funding from a clutch of high-profile investors including Beerud Sheth, the founder of online freelance platform Elance (now Upwork) and smart messaging platform Gupshup.
Other investors that participated in the seed round include Samuel Choi, Shivashish Chatterjee and Yuvraja C Singh, the co-founders of non-banking finance company DMI Finance Pvt. Ltd.
HappyShappy, which is operated by HappyShappy Event Services Pvt. Ltd, was founded by Sana U Hoda and Nitin Sood. The firm, Sood said, focusses on three things: being a social media platform, an aggregator of user-generated content and a commerce platform as well.
The company’s revenue model currently operates on referral links, and it is also exploring the possibility of helping brands promote their content as another revenue stream.
Through the portal, visitors can browse photos of fashion, looks, food and travel. Any content that a user finds interesting can be saved to a ‘Dreamboard’ which can then be viewed by anybody else on the platform.
The company says it is growing 100% month-on-month, and that its platform has also shown good results as a search engine optimisation tool for brands and their websites.
Marsplay Internet Pvt. Ltd, which operates a community-led commerce platform, has raised funding from Venture Highway and a few angel investors including Xiaomi executive Alvin Tse.
Existing investors including TPG Growth partner Shailesh Rao, through his personal office, and ICICI Venture director Nikhil Mohta also invested, Marsplay said in a statement.
The company will use the funds to beef up its product engineering team and creator community, it added.
Samir Sood, founder at Venture Highway, said the fashion-led product discovery has been shifting away from e-commerce websites to social networks but the discovery to purchase process is still disconnected. “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,” he said.
The startup was founded by Ayush Shukla and Misbah Ashraf in 2017. Its app provides personalised and curated visual content on fashion trends with shopping links. It had earlier raised seed funding from former Youtube India head Amit Agarwal and a few others.
Marsplay said it will use the fresh capital to beef up its product engineering team and creator community.