Molecular Borrows Foxtale’s SRK Playbook with a Lookalike — and Skips the Celebrity Bill

~ After Foxtales SRK vanity film, Honasa-backed Molecular answers with lookalike Ibrahim Qadri, a ₹500 fee gag, and 10 million+ views ~

Mumbai, September 2026: Seeing a celebrity in white at a vanity, humming through a skincare routine, felt familiar for a reason. Foxtale just did that with Shah Rukh Khan. Now Molecular has restaged the same setup — vanity, routine, familiar tune — with one twist: it isn’t SRK.

The science-led skincare brand’s film stars SRK lookalike Ibrahim Qadri in a cheeky reply to Foxtale’s Let Your Glow Through vanity film. The lookalike essentially tells viewers the brand doesn’t have a big budget, reveals he was paid just ₹500, then digs at Molecular for being “terrible” enough to spend on products instead of a celebrity face.

Borrow the look, skip the bill

The gag lands because the comparison is deliberate. Foxtale’s SRK film — Khan walking into a vanity room for serum, moisturiser, sunscreen and face mask categories — has crossed 37 million views. Molecular leans into the echo rather than denying it, and the brand says its own cut has already passed 10 million views.

The joke about a thin marketing budget sits beside a bigger corporate story. Molecular sits under BTM Ventures, founded by Trisha Reddy Talasani in August 2022 (also home to men’s grooming brand Reginald Men). Honasa Consumer, parent of Mamaearth, took a majority stake in BTM in December 2025 and later named Shivang Jain CEO of the venture to scale both brands.

Formulation over face?

Molecular positions around accessible, science-led skincare — sunscreen listed around ₹399 on its site — while Foxtale’s hero SKUs often sit higher in the mid-hundreds. The creative bet is clear: if you can’t buy King Khan, buy the meme of King Khan, admit the ₹500 casting cheque on camera, and let the product claim do the rest.

For a crowded D2C beauty shelf already chasing SRK-scale attention, Molecular’s move is less anti-celebrity than anti-budget theatre — prove the idea travels even when the superstar invoice doesn’t.

MAM editorial team The strategists and writers at Mad About Marketing, writing up what we see in the work every week.