Bengaluru-based video-focused discovery platform Trell has raised $45 million in a Series B funding round led by financial group Mirae Asset, clothing and fashion brand H&M Group. LB Investments co-led the round, with participation from KTB Network, Samsung Ventures and Fosun RZ Capital.
Trell had raised $11.4 million in Series A funding, in August 2020, as a aftermath of the growth momentum it had gained post the TikTok ban in India. The discovery platform had also launched a social commerce section on its app around the same time to enable users to watch personalised product recommendations across beauty, personal care and wellness categories.
Trell, founded in August 2017 by a team of Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay alumni Pulkit Agrawal, Prashant Sachan, Arun Lodhi and NITIE alumnus Bimal Kartheek Rebba, has raised $62 million to date.
It will use the latest fundraise to expand its social commerce operations by entering the apparel, home care, mom and baby-care categories in the months to come.
The startup claims to have over 100 million downloads on its platform and over 50 million monthly active users (MAU). Its content library features videos in 8 regional languages garnering over 20 billion monthly views, Trell said in a press note.
The company is now looking to launch in additional six languages and expand its footprint in over 2000 cities and towns of India. Over the last few months, Trell has on boarded over 500 personal care and beauty brands, including Maybelline, L’Oréal and Garnier.
“Trell has become the launchpad for many up-and-coming D2C [direct-to-consumer] brands and advertisers, who are leveraging our community of regional content creators to advertise their products and services on the platform… Our aim is to enable over 2000 brands to penetrate the deeper pockets of the country and communicate with their potential customers through regional content creators by 2022,” the company’s chief operating officer and co-founder Rebba, said.
Meanwhile, the company’s chief technology officer and co-founder Lodhi added that they have been leveraging on their artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology and neural networks to create users’ psychographic profile of customers’ behavioural patterns on the platform. This allows the platform to provide personalised content and product recommendation for the customers.
These developments have also led Trell to record 10-15 times year-on-year growth and 30% month-on-month growth since inception, the company said.
Social commerce is still at a nascent stage in India, but the players in this segment have been growing at an exponential rate. Earlier in May, Meesho became the first social commerce platform to enter the unicorn club. It has raised $515 million to date from SoftBank, FaceBook and Sequoia.
DealShare, on the other hand, recently closed a $144 million round, taking its total fundraise to $183 million to date. Its investors include Tiger Global, WestBridge Capital, Alpha Wave Incubation and Z3Partners. Other players in this segment are Glowroad, CityMall and SimSim.
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