StartUp Circle: How has Trell grown post the Chinese App Ban?

As the Indian government restrained the use of popular Chinese app TikTok, Indian content creators rushed to home-grown apps. Here, Trell also provided similar short-video making features on its platform. The lifestyle community-commerce platform is breaking all the records by witnessing 20 million+ downloads. Just after the decision of Indian Govt to promote Atmanirbhar Bharat, the app was trending at #1 in Free Lifestyle. It has also received 500K uploads in a single day with 220K new content creators.

Here is CiOL in conversation with Pulkit Agarwal, Co-Founder of Trell. He talks to us about the app, entrepreneurship and his goals moving forward.

How does your platform Trell operate?

Trell is a Lifestyle Community Commerce Platform, where users come together to share 3-minute vertical videos around their experiences and interests in the categories like Recipes, Fashion, Personal Care, Technology & Gadgets, Movies & TV Reviews, and many more and connect with like-minded individuals in their native languages. Currently, we have over 20 categories available in 8 Indian languages. As a business, we are into social commerce. We have a community of interest or passion-based content creators (KOL’s). They enable our users to make well informed and suitable purchase decisions for better lifestyle choices.

What sets you apart from your competitors?

Trell is a storytelling platform. People share videos of their passion with a like-minded community across various lifestyle interests. This is unlike other short-video, long-video platforms and recently emerging Indian counterparts. Those engage their users with 15-second videos of lip-syncing, dance, comedy and acting.

The diverse experiences of our content creators (KOLs) on Trell helps our users make informed and suitable decisions when it comes to enhancing their lifestyle-related choices. We have been receiving a lot of user love and are doing very well in terms of our engagement and product stability. This is visible in the market today. In the last month, we have received a great response from our customers and users. Further, through exceptional Play Store reviews, we have a 4.6-star rating.

What challenges did you face while starting up? How did you overcome them?

Every entrepreneurial journey has its ups and downs. With every stage of our growth, we have seen our fair share of challenges, too. In the beginning, it was understanding the roots of the community and building an effective network. The content creators were such passionate storytellers; they wanted to be recognised as foodies, fashionistas, travellers etc. They wanted to make vlogging career and establish this identity online which we had to make for them. But, while we were solving problems of the community, we faced many challenges of our own. For instance, to upgrade our processes, our communication, tech stacks to provide them with user delight, equal opportunities, growth and visibility.

What cities are you in presently?

Trell is currently present in over 75% of cities of India. About 62% of content creators on Trell are from Tier-II cities and beyond. And over 60% of these content creators are women, generating more than 75% of the UGC content on Trell. There is a rising interest in the younger generation to emerge as content creators and engage with a thriving community. Which is why 85% of the regional creators are between 18 and 34 years.

How has a ban on Chinese applications impacted your business? What is your business/market growth?

The unexpected ban on Chinese apps did alter our growth trajectory. However, even before the ban in June, Trell was growing rapidly at a rate of 25% every month. Since the ban, we have seen an overwhelming response from our users. Every day we are achieving new milestones like surpassing the active users of both Pinterest and Twitter in India.

We have witnessed an 800% increase in the screen time of our users. We are also growing stronger with over 18 million creators sharing unique content with our users every day. Recently, we have also partnered with the Chennai Super Kings for the IPL season. In the past 1 month alone, videos on Trell have been viewed over 5 billion times.

TikTok had a security flaw. How safe is your platform?

Data protection and privacy of our users’ data is a top priority for us at Trell. We are a safe platform that does not ask for any unnecessary details from our users. We are backed by a team of extremely capable tech-personnel who work day and night to make sure that our users have the best possible experience on the app while staying rest-assured that their data is safe with us. Being an Indian startup, we house all our users’ data in the country itself and there is no risk of this data reaching the wrong hands.

What are your expansion plans? What is your vision for Trell?

At this point, we are focused on creating a community of individuals that can have meaningful connections and conversations with each other about all aspects of lifestyle. Our vision is to empower every Indian to make better lifestyle choices without any barriers or judgement and to share their stories, experiences, knowledge about diverse interests and passions.

We are also actively working towards giving our users personalized content based on their tastes and interests by diving deeper into advanced Machine Learning Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence. Features like “Talk Show Hosting” are in the works and our latest feature “Reaction Maker” has been helping our creators engage more deeply with our growing community.

Trell is committed to becoming India’s go-to lifestyle video app. We want to build for and give back to the Indian community. None of this is possible without the support of our users, creators and team members. We are in the process of hiring energetic, creative and experienced team members who understand the nuances of Indian audiences and will help us become bigger and better.

Funding details

Trell has raised a total of $16.95 million after a recent Series A infusion of $11.4 million from some very well known investors and industry experts like KTB Network, Samsung Ventures, Lets Venture, WEH Ventures, Ankur Nagpal (CEO of Teachable), Gokul Rajaram (Board Member, Pinterest, Square and DoorDash), Vineet Buch (Ex-Head of Google Play Store Development), Rajan Anandan (MD, Sequoia Capital and Surge), Aprameya Radhakrishna (Co-founder of Vocal and TaxiForSure), Ramakant Sharma (Co-founder, LivSpace), Nitin Gupta (Co-founder, PayUMoney), Anupam Mittal (Founder, Shaadi.com), Amit Lakhotia (Ek-Tokopedia, Paytm) and Shanti Mohan (CEO, LetsVenture).

The pandemic and apps ban has led to an upsurge in the organic users on the platform, which has effectively reduced our expenses and helped us grow exponentially. The recent addition of funds will help us expand our platform and business plans further.

What do you advise a startupreneur?

For any startupreneur, the first thing she or he needs to do is THINK BIG. Plan for scale and don’t get distracted by other things that come your way. Focus on what you started with and work on making that big instead of getting distracted by other enticing opportunities on your journey to success. Remember that your consumers are your biggest and most important markers of success. Solve for Consumer Love even if it is not scalable in the beginning, despite the many hardships and crises one experiences on this journey, your consumer’s love will get you where you want to be.

It is impossible to stick to your dream and make it massive without a solid team and persistence so make sure you hire the right people, those who believe in your vision and want to grow with you. A concerted effort in the right direction will lead to success.

What’s your mantra to become successful in life and what would you like to give back to society?

We are still on our journey to success as we continue to achieve milestones after milestones. But what’s most important for us is to remain focused and passionate about our vision. Trell is all about giving back to society as we want to enable more Indians to have access to better lifestyle opportunities by bridging the gap between experts and seekers.

For instance, when the pandemic struck, doctors from all across the country came forward to begin educating people on COVID-19 on Trell, when things were still raw and not everyone knew what was going on. To date, we have a category on our app called #FightCorona where information is given in regional languages to impact and inform more people. Other than helping users become more aware of lifestyle-related topics, we want to make sure we help our users in more ways than one to ensure that they can rely on us for accurate and relevant information.