,Indian short video app Trell has recorded 500K orders on its social commerce feature in October, as the vertical continues to grow 30 per cent month on month.
Co-founder Pulkit Agrawal told BusinessLine that the online transactions on the platform have been growing 100 per cent month on month. The company positions itself as a lifestyle social commerce platform where consumers watch short videos about their interests and passions in categories like fashion, beauty, gadgets and the tech sector.
“While they discover these videos, users will also see some of the products that the influencers or celebrities are using in their videos and will have the ability to purchase those products from the platform itself. So the way you could imagine it is how LinkedIn is a Naukri.com 2.0. Trell is effectively a Myntra or Nykaa 2.0,” Agrawal added.
In line with Trell’s vision, many e-commerce platforms have also launched social commerce verticals to deepen their reach in India and capture the Tier 2 and beyond audience. For instance, Flipkart has launched Shopsy, and Paytm Mall has MyStore.
For the commerce aspect of Trell, the company has directly tied up with brands to set up a Trell Store on the app. There are about 600 brands listed on Trell as of now and over 20,000 SKUs. Some brands selling on Trell include Sanfe, Mama Earth, WOW, McCaffine, Lakme, Mama Earth, Plum, Dove, Tresemme, Nivea, Garnier and Maybelline, Beardo, and The Man Company, among others.
“We are a curated marketplace, which essentially means that we work directly with the brands. We onboard them and we also help them in collaborating with influencers, who then create content for these brands which eventually results in getting order volumes for the brands,” said Agrawal.
In terms of delivery and logistics of commerce, Trell follows an asset-light model where its brand partners take care of the inventory and delivery process. However, Trell has a team that ensures that all standard operating procedures are followed.
Own marketplace
Trell chose to directly set up its own marketplace instead of partnering with any other established e-commerce companies because it believes that a company already at scale might have different priorities compared to the priorities that Trell and its consumers might have.
“You might be the second-best option for them and not the foremost priority. So, if we partnered with somebody just for passing on the order leads, they would treat us as a marketing channel and not something which is a holistic experience for consumers. And it’s better to build that entire experience as compared to just partnering there. By owning the marketplace we are able to control the customer experience and also enable brands to directly work with the influencers,” he added.
Active content creators
Trell claims to have 8 million monthly active content creators generating 30 million content pieces every month. The customer base is largely regional and is spread across ten languages. Almost 90 per cent of Trell users are said to be non-English language speakers.
Agrawal noted the platform’s ability to deliver meaningful content across regional languages as its differentiator from all other social commerce options present in the space, including Instagram and Facebook. Overall, Trell claims to have over 50 million monthly active users, and each user is said to be spending around 30 minutes consuming Trell’s content on a per-day basis.
