Trell raises $11.4 million in Series-A from KTB Network, Samsung Ventures

Currently, they have over 20 categories available in 8 Indian languages. Trell monetises through social commerce where the interest-based community of content creators (KOL’s) enable users to make well informed and suitable purchase decisions for better lifestyle choices.

“Trell has shown incredible growth over the last few months and we believe it's only the beginning of what will come in the future. We were especially impressed by how the team dealt with an unexpected user growth during the covid-period. It'll soon be a most prominent lifestyle social discovery platform in India and we're happy to ride on a rocketship", said Hyesung Kim of KTB Network.

With more than 75 million downloads and 25 million monthly active users on its app, Trell has grown 27X in the past 12 months and has emerged as one of the biggest lifestyle social platforms in India.

Since the Chinese app ban, Trell has witnessed 500 percent growth with a total of 15 million-plus creators on its platform receiving more than 5 billion monthly views and has been rapidly growing since then.

Pulkit Agrawal, co-founder, Trell, said, “We are thrilled to onboard KTB Network and Samsung Ventures as partners in the journey and look forward to building towards our vision of empowering millions of Indians to have better lifestyle choices.”

Prashant Sachan, co-Founder of Trell, said, “We are glad to see the rapid growth and consumer love at Trell. Even today, over 500 million Indian Language internet users are struggling with lifestyle inspiration and purchase decisions. With more regional key-opinion-leaders (KOLs) coming on Trell, our aim is to become the most relatable lifestyle community commerce platform for our users.”

The new round of investment will be used to further expand and grow the fostering community, to enhance the platform's personalisation and recommendation engine with advanced machine learning Algorithms and AI, and add new features that will excite the users experience.

To reinforce the same, Trell is in the process of hiring an energetic and creative team that empathises with their audiences.

Bimal Kartheek Rebba, co-founder, Trell, said, “ We take a lot of effort into grooming our creators in the 'Trell Creators Program' into subject matter experts, who we call key opinion leaders. With these funds, we will be investing in grooming 100,000 new opinion leaders across languages for India and provide 100+ million Indians the access to purpose-driven content at their fingertips in the coming years. ”

Arun Lodhi, Co-Founder, Trell, said, “At Trell, we are leveraging cutting edge advancements in machine learning and neural networks for building a personalized experience. We are also utilizing advanced tech in helping the content creators on our platform to further hone their craft. By analyzing data around their various videos, we provide personalized recommendations to KOLs, in addition to other tips and tricks that help them improve their craft, especially storytelling.”

Trell counts prominent names like Rajan Anandan, 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 (Founder, Park+, ex-Tokopedia, Paytm), Shanti Mohan (CEO, LetsVenture) in its existing list of angel investors.

Trell was also a part of the second cohort of Surge, Sequoia Capital India’s rapid-scale up program. With this funding, the total funding raised by Trell comes to $16.95 million.