~ 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.
