Cutting Edge Tech: Pulkit Agrawal, Co-Founder, Trell

Fondly referred to as the Video Pinterest for India powered by user-generated original content, Trell is a community-based platform enabling lifestyle discovery through meaningful content in various Indian languages. Pulkit Agrawal, Co-Founder, Trell, discusses the directions this technology is taking.

Voice&Data: Describe in some detail the technology used by Trell and the role of IT in it

Pulkit Agrawal: At Trell, we are leveraging cutting edge advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence for building an intelligent platform that personalises user experience for NHB. Since first-time internet users form an important part of our audience, it is important for us to keep the user experience easy and non-intimidating. At the same time, the challenge lies in developing the technology that can support Indian Languages stack and be able to provide meaningful results for the users while keeping into account the cultural and local relevance.

Our team is utilising advanced tech and data analysis in helping the content creators on our platform further hone their talents by creating detailed personas of content creators. This helps us provide personalised recommendations to KOLs, in addition to other tips and tricks that help them improve their craft, especially storytelling. This also helps us resolve challenges like decision fatigue or a shortage of ideas for content creators.

Now, let’s look at the other end of the spectrum; we are forever committed to making the platform more relevant and meaningful for our users. Technology helps us identify the interests of users or content consumers on our platform. This is achieved by utilising the latest advancements for understanding the user psycho-graph and interest-graph. We then conduct 10-levels of cataloguing to best gauge their interests and match them with the perfect content available. For instance, if a user is looking for “life-saving fashion hacks”, our intelligent platform will recommend content by fashion content creators having a similar skin tone or other racial or ethnic similarities.

Voice&Data: What is the geographical distribution of the app and kindly share the number of users from different parts of the country? Also, what per cent of the users are women from Tier 2/3 cities?

Pulkit Agrawal: Trell has been downloaded over 15 Mn times. About 60% of our users come from Tier II and III cities like Indore, Lucknow, Patna, Chandigarh, Agra, Dehradun, Kochi, Tripura and the rest are from metro cities with Bangalore and Mumbai having the highest number of consumers.

About 78% of our content creators are from non-metro cities out of which 68% of them are women, who primarily create 75% of the meaningful content on Trell in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu respectively.

Voice&Data: In which Industry sectors can Trell be used for a business generation, if any?

Pulkit Agrawal: The first time internet user has a historical behaviour of going to Kirana and Specialised Stores for buying products for their aspirational and regular needs. They spend a lot of time with the store attendants to understand the benefits of the items and make an informed decision coupled with a high level of trust/assurance from the salesperson. But, when they come online, that guided shopping experience from people they can trust is entirely missing especially in their own mother tongue.

Today, 2 out of 3 internet users are still not buying products online. The users have access to products, have means to pay online (as they do for recharges) but they lack awareness around use-cases of the products along with the absence of a trusted face whom they can go for any queries. The emerging KOLs economy/Content Creators can be the harbingers of awareness for various products which satisfy the needs of users and help them in simplifying the decision-making process by enabling trust through their social status.

Hence, as a community-commerce lifestyle platform, the opportunities are limitless for us at Trell. We are building the economy where consumers, creators and brands can get the maximum output of the internet ecosystem. Our users can stay up to date about the latest trends and get informed on various experiences with the help of content from KOL they follow in their respective language, a content creator(KOL) can make story-telling a career choice by virtue of the genuine and meaningful content creation and brands can spread word-of-mouth using the organic community.

With the explosion of camera phones and advanced content creation tools, the KOL economy is going to boom even further. Content creation is becoming a full-time gig, everybody can be a content creator now!

Looking at china today, their KOL economy has a market share of $13.5Bn and in the next 5 years the Indian commerce market is going double as well, touching a valuation of $100Bn. Brands spend 30% of their marketing budgets on influencer marketing and are realising the impact and the possibilities of growth in influencer led commerce.

Voice&Data: What are the future directions Trell is taking in 2020-21?

Pulkit Agrawal: Essentially, Trell would help the NHB to get educated & aware to buy the most relevant experiences and products around them. It would enable them to discover the right opportunities or simply enhance their lifestyle, and by its extension, the quality of their lives. We believe that our journey at Trell has just started and we have a long way to go for helping fellow Indians in becoming a better version of themselves through the power of community and meaningful content.