‘Brands of today and tomorrow can leverage video, vernacular & social for better reach’

Bimal Rebba, Co-founder and COO, Trell, spoke about how he plans to tap into video and vernacular social content to scale up the Indian lifestyle social commerce platform. It's the mobile application used by Indian communities to share their experiences in the form of three-minute vertical videos. He was speaking at the virtual unveiling of the dentsu-e4m Digital Advertising Report on Tuesday.

Rebba shared insights about his brand Trell and how they were looking at e-commerce evolving in the next three to five years. Defining Trell as a video commerce platform - an influencer led e-commerce platform – Rebba says users discover content under various lifestyle categories such as beauty, fashion, home decor, DIY in more than ten languages. “Most of the users have access to the content in these categories in their own language. But most importantly, Trell is the mobile-first format which is not beyond two minutes on the platform.” According to Rebba, users also get an ability to discover products and services through this content from their favourite influencers and are able to purchase these products and services from the video with a single click of a button.”

“Now, this is where we envision ecommerce evolving into one of its key events where it enables people to quickly not only discover products in their own language but also educate themselves in terms of how to use a product from the influencers and also buy them through a very simplistic user interface and that's what we call a social commerce platform,” he shared. 

Rebba also spoke about how brands of tomorrow and today can leverage both video and vernacular and social contact to scale up and penetrate deeper into the markets.

Sharing data from a survey by Trell, Rebba says, “If you look at the entire landscape of India, even though there are 800-million odd internet users you will see the bottom-funnel the number of users who are actually shopping online being only 170 million. That means there's a huge drop off between the number of users who are actually online and the number of users who are actually shopping.”

Rebba further explained that one of the key factors of why it's not happening is because people are not able to trust or are not able to find the relevant products and most importantly understand the usage of these products. “Now because of the sole reason we are actually seeing this gap not reducing and thereby we need video and vernacular to ensure that the e-commerce experience becomes more inclusive and diverse as we move forward."

But, who are these users and why is it so important for us? Rebba pointed out that this was one of very personalized way of understanding how ecommerce is divided. "Indian users are divided when it comes to mobile infrastructure in India. So we call it an India 1, India 2 and India 3. So India one is the highly monetizable base which is already existing, which we call the first 50 million who are accustomed to how to purchase online but what is most important is to understand that India too is now upcoming and they are ready to buy online. But if you see the size of this India two market in terms of volume itself, when it comes to number of people is four times that of 210 million users with an average per capita income of $1,400 and above. And if you see, the total spending power is twice as much as India one. what that means, by simply tapping into the spaces such as video vernacular and making it more relatable and localizing you are able to tap into a market that is twice in terms of spending power."

The other important aspect is that even if these users are coming online the internet penetration or adoption is still low, which means the potential for future growth is also immense. "We also focus upon markets like Tamil, Marathi, Kannada and Bengali. The penetration is still around 18% to 21% and that means there's an immense scope of growth. But at the same time, if you look at the users who are already online it is huge. If you look at people who consume content, there are 500 million users who actually watch video content in vernacular languages in India at least once on a monthly basis. But if you look at the number of shoppers, again, it is 170 million or something, so that's the kind of divide between people consuming content and people purchasing online. So that is where video and vernacular help brands to leverage and reach their audiences."

One of the key statistics he shared was that of 18 plus Indians who watch video content online. 325 million - that means every two out of three people who are online today watch video content and that's the size of the market.

"This is a summary of what I've been talking about. Out of the 750 odd-million, only 110 million are shopping but 450 million are using social media and 500 million people are actually watching a video online. That means by adding these two levers, you will ensure that the band is reaching out to five times the audience base that you're currently reaching out to."

Rebba asks as we move forward and double tap on it, beyond video and vernacular, what are the users actually looking forward to? “We see that they have a very limited purchase clarity and that means they do not know what they're looking for by being in their own language. You need to be able to create relatable and educational content for them. Second, they are highly experimental in nature and that means they are willing to try multiple brands if they have access to providers."

He explained one of the key pieces of evidence that they have from their platform itself with respect to categories such as beauty and personal care in tier-II markets where there is a higher average order value and that is 20% more than tier-I audiences. "We have more frequency of purchases in a year. Also, they at least come back 1.5 times more than the tier I audiences to purchase these brands. And most importantly, they have been highly experimental.  They are happy to spend that additional rupee to buy them and try them out. But having said that they are sometimes price conscious which means customizing your services and products to those markets localizing and having the right word phase one made great top-line addition to some of the brands that we have on Trell as a platform."

He also mentioned that most of the D2c brands that did not exist months back are today commanding a substantial chunk of the market share by only slowly creating products that people love the most. "This is going to only accelerate and that means by 2025 we would have close to 6,000 to 7,000 D2C brands. That means the competition is going to be very competitive and it's going to be a highly competitive environment. So that means not only launching products would be important but scaling would be very important for most of these brands."