BENGALURU: Short video platform India’s largest lifestyle-community-commerce platform, Trell, raised $ 11.4 million in Series A round. The round was led by KTB Network. Samsung Ventures, Ankur Nagpal, CEO of Teachable, Gokul Rajaram (Board Member, Pinterest, Square, DoorDash).
Vineet Buch (Ex-Head of Google Play Store Development) also participated via Firebolt Ventures in the round along with existing investors Sequoia’s Surge, Fosun RZ Capital, and WEH Ventures. Trell was launched in August 2017, by IIT Bombay Alumni Arun Lodhi, Prashant Sachan, Pulkit Agrawal and NITIE Alumnus Bimal Kartheek Rebba.
On Trell users come together to share 3-minute vertical videos around their interests and passions in the categories like Beauty, Recipes, Fashion, Personal Care, Technology & Gadgets, Movies & TV Reviews, and many more and connect with like-minded individuals in their own native languages.
Currently, they have over 20 categories available in 8 Indian languages. Trell monetises through social commerce where the interest-based/passion-based community of content creators (KOL’s) enable users to make well informed and suitable purchase decisions for better lifestyle choices.
Trell said it has seen 75 million downloads and 25 million monthly active users on its app.
Since the Chinese apps ban, Trell said it has witnessed 500% growth with a total of 15 million+ creators on its platform receiving more than 5 billion monthly views and has been rapidly growing since then.
The new round of investment will be used to further expand and grow the creator’s 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.
Trell counts 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.
