Aim to become global leader in visual blogging, lifestyle commerce: Pulkit Agrawal, Trell

Launched in 2017, Trell has emerged as one of the largest social commerce platforms in India with 45 million monthly active users. With social commerce segment in India projected to reach $70 billion by 2030, Trell is bullish about its future growth prospects. In an interview with exchange4media, Trell Co-Founder and CEO Pulkit Agrawal spoke about the platform's journey since inception and the strategic decision to pivot from video sharing to social commerce. He also offered a peek into the platform's future growth plans.

Excerpts:

How has Trell evolved as a platform since inception and what are the challenges you faced in building it?

It all started with a simple thought to solve a personal problem. Like most college-goers, I and my co-founders often spent a lot of time on the internet searching for online content about multiple things like personal care, grooming, food, travel, etc. While doing so, in no time, we realized that a large chunk of online content was alienating for most Indians as it was westernized and available only in English. Besides, there was availability of massive content but that was purely for entertainment, and added no meaning to Indian consumers’ lives. This prompted the ideation process and we started to think of how we could bring a wide range of meaningful content in regional languages under a single umbrella.

While Trell was launched officially in 2017, we started building the Trell community much earlier on other popular social media platforms. In just six months, the channels went from 0 to 1,00,000 followers without any targeted, inorganic marketing campaigns. Identifying the demand for meaningful content in regional languages, we extensively studied consumer behaviour and preferences to gain in-depth insights into understanding them. We understood that most of the users don’t have an intuitive format in which they could express their experiences and knowledge about their own passions.

Thus, it led to the launch of Trell as a lifestyle video blogging platform where like-minded people could share their experiences and knowledge across categories like beauty, fashion, health and wellness, food, among others, in their own language. With the recent addition of commerce on the platform, users can now make better purchase decisions through reviews and recommendations made by their favourite KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) and also buy the product from within the platform itself.

Today, Trell is one of the largest lifestyle social commerce platforms in the country with 45 million monthly active users on its platform and 100% M-O-M growth on online transactions.

The biggest challenge in building a social commerce platform in India is to build the ‘Social’ component itself. With so much diversity across the nation, we have to cater to different requirements across zones. Apart from this, there are basic operational challenges like any other e-commerce platform faces that we overcome as we grow.

What was the idea behind pivoting from a video-sharing platform to a social commerce platform?

With the pandemic and lockdown, more people logged on to their phones but had very limited choices and resources to consume and share meaningful content. In the past year, we have witnessed 15X growth and that was only because we were constantly innovating and building the product as per our users’ needs. We launched our own vlogging camera and the first ever reaction video maker to help people create content with ease, and both were very widely appreciated.

The second biggest addition we made was to launch Trell shop, which has helped many homegrown brands reach out to a wide range of audiences through the power of our KOL community.

Our primary focus has always been on building the community that has helped us lay the foundation to the exponential growth we witnessed in recent times. Social commerce was a natural progression to our growth rather than a pivot. We have set a benchmark in the already raging industry that has helped accelerate our growth.

How has this strategy worked for Trell?

The addition of Trell shop is to provide a medium through which users can buy lifestyle products based on the recommendations of their trusted influencers or KOLs. As of now, Trell Shop features 500+ brands, and 70% of the purchases are from tier-II and tier-III cities. Social commerce has been a primary focus for us since inception. The shop section has worked as a catalyst for our expansion plans, but Trell is more than just your regular online shopping website and our plans to grow via content led commerce has been nothing short of rewarding.

How do you see social commerce evolving in India?

Today, social media plays an instrumental role in influencing consumers’ tastes, opinions, and behaviour. Social commerce gives brands a direct connection with the consumers and is a convenient way to shop online from the consumers’ perspective too, making it a highly lucrative space that is witnessing skyrocketing demand. According to a report by Bain and Company, social commerce in India is projected to reach USD 70 billion by 2030. As of January 2021, India has over 448 million social media users, which is continuously rising. In addition, RedSeer Consulting, in a report highlighted, that social commerce is estimated to grab 5% of the Indian e-commerce market at a CAGR of 65% between 2020 and 2025.

However, trust is a hygiene factor to drive any form of transactions online. The first step to building our social commerce platform was to build an engaging community based on trust between our users, brands and KOLs. Peer-to-Peer reviews and recommendations from KOLs in their native languages, make it easier for users to make well-informed decisions to help them make suitable lifestyle purchases. Higher community engagement leads to more visibility and awareness for the brands. And for larger brands that are facing rising customer acquisition costs, social commerce also presents a cost-effective alternative.

Combining this with the power of advanced AI/ ML technology and product innovation, visibility and content curation, shoppable content provides a simplified shopping experience for users on the platform. This opens up a plethora of opportunities for content creators and niche D2C brands, empowering over 40 million Indians to become micro-entrepreneurs and establish small businesses. Overall, it will create significant growth in the wealth creation for the country.

How many active users do you have on your platform?

Trell has 45 million+ monthly active users and we have crossed 100 million+ downloads. Our users either consume or create content across categories including beauty and wellness, health and fitness, food, travel, etc., in 8 regional languages – Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam, and English. Additionally, since the launch of commerce, users have been enjoying the ease with which they can learn about products through experiences, reviews, recommendations and also buy the products from within the app itself.

Who are Trell’s core users and where do they come from?

Over 60% of Trell’s user base consists of women between the age group of 18 and 35 from tier 2 cities and beyond who actively create over 70% of the content on the platform.

How do you ensure that users keep coming back to the platform?

Trell has always been committed to building and enhancing its product offerings for the community. Content has been a driving force when it comes to attracting users, particularly since a majority of the content is in regional languages, and it has created a sense of personalisation for our users. We maintain a constant feedback loop between Trell, its creators and its users, which helps us implement necessary strategies and improve the product. This has helped us with significant organic growth and word of mouth for the brand.

What is Trell’s revenue strategy?

Our revenue model is based on community-led content commerce, where Trell acts as a curated market place for brands and its potential customers. Brands that get listed with us have the power to unlock a huge targeted market with the power of our KOL community and their popularity. KOLs share their trusted recommendations with their followers and monetize for their collaborations with the brands. Trell shares a percentage of the revenue generated through these collaborations.

How many brands have partnered with Trell since you started monetising?

Trell’s Shop section has 500+ brands including Mirabelle, Lakmé, and Tresemmé, Ustraa, The Man Company, Dr. Vaidya, MamaEarth, Plum, Wow etc. amongst others and over 70% of the purchases have been from tier-II, tier-III and regional markets. Brands like Tinder, Poco, Upstox, Paytm, VI, POCO, The Games 24*7, Adda52, Dominoes have been seeing incredible traction with our influencer marketing assets.

Short video platform Chingari has also ventured into the social commerce space. Do you think more players entering this market will broaden the marketplace?

Certainly! In fact, the marketplace has already begun to expand since social commerce is growing rapidly and more brands are experimenting with social commerce. The industry has incredible potential that both platforms and investors have been realising and we are glad to be leading in the space.

What are your expansion plans going forward?

As India’s largest lifestyle social commerce platform, we are now planning to scale by expanding and enhancing our product offerings. Over the next 5 years, we will be expanding our footprint and aim to become a global leader in the visual blogging and lifestyle commerce space. In the coming months, we will focus primarily on adding more regional languages and augmenting products, especially in our ‘Shop’ section.

Any key areas that you will focus on like product development, talent, tech, marketing, and so on?

We will continue to expand commerce with the inclusion of more brands and also add more lifestyle categories like apparel and homecare to our current offerings. On the product front, we are in the process of adding more creator-friendly tools for content creators and also enhance our personalization algorithms to create a seamless experience for our users. At the organizational level, we have grown incredibly in the last year and will continue to onboard creative talent that supports us and believes in our vision to empower India digitally.

Do you have fundraising plans going forward?

We are currently in talks with potential investors, and we will be raising funds in the coming months.

How committed are existing investors to take the business to the next level?

Our investors understand the scope and potential of the social commerce industry. Trell has clearly led the way and has been consistently growing from both the content and commerce fronts. We have been fortunate enough to have them support and believe in our vision.