TRELL

Pulkit Agrawal, Prashant Sachan, Bimal Kartheek Rebba, and Arun Lodhi met while working in tech in Bangalore. They noticed a massive gap in the Indian content market: nearly everything on social media was in English, targeting an urban elite.

Hundreds of millions of Indians — from tier-2 cities, speaking regional languages, shopping at local stores — had almost no content that spoke to their lives.

They built Trell in 2017 as a travel and lifestyle content platform where users could share short videos and photo journals in their native language. The format was Instagram-meets-travel-blog, but designed for Indian users who wanted to document trips to Rajasthan, not Bali.

The early product was rough but the insight was sharp: local language content was dramatically underserved in India's internet economy.

As the user base grew, the founders identified a second insight. The people posting lifestyle content were influencing purchases — suggesting products, showing off items, reviewing local businesses.

They pivoted Trell toward social commerce, adding shoppable links, brand partnerships, and a creator monetization layer. The bet was that Trell's micro-influencers, with their deep local credibility, could convert followers into buyers more effectively than traditional Instagram advertising.

Trell monetized through brand partnerships and social commerce. Consumer brands — cosmetics, personal care, electronics — paid to run campaigns through Trell's network of regional language creators.

Users who followed a creator in their language were more likely to trust their product recommendations than a generic influencer ad. Trell took a commission on any sales transacted through the platform.

The model was logical in theory: hyper-local trust networks converting into purchase intent. The challenge was that monetization at scale required reliable creator quality and authentic user metrics — both of which came under scrutiny in 2022.

The Trell app is the core product — a short video and photo journal platform supporting content in Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, and other Indian languages. Users can follow creators, save lifestyle content, and now shop products recommended within posts.

The app also features a Trell for Brands dashboard where advertisers can discover relevant creators, run campaigns, and track performance. Creator monetization tools allow users with established followings to earn from brand deals directly through the platform.

Trell's growth playbook was straightforward: recruit creators in regional languages, build their audiences through algorithmic amplification, and then pitch brands on the engaged reach those creators represented. The strategy worked well enough to attract H&M Group and Sequoia Capital India.

Trell grew to claim tens of millions of monthly active users across multiple Indian languages. The company leaned hard into creator acquisition, onboarding hundreds of thousands of content producers.

The flaw in the strategy emerged when independent audits and investor scrutiny questioned how many of those users were real and how engaged they genuinely were.

The crisis of 2022 nearly ended Trell. The company laid off approximately 300 employees — roughly half its workforce — in May 2022.

At the same time, reports emerged that investors had raised concerns about inflated user and creator metrics. There were allegations of financial irregularities and disputes between founders and the board.

The combination — sudden mass layoffs, credibility questions, and internal conflict — destroyed the momentum the company had spent five years building. Recovering from a trust deficit in the creator economy, where authenticity is the product, is exceptionally difficult.

H&M Group led both Trell's Series A and Series B rounds, an unusual move for the Swedish fashion retailer that signaled strong strategic interest in India's social commerce market. Sequoia Capital India participated in the Series B alongside KB Investment and WEH Ventures.

The H&M relationship gave Trell an anchor brand partner as well as capital — a dual advantage that the company struggled to fully leverage before its 2022 crisis.