Trell Raises Series B Round Of $45 Mn From Mirae Asset, H&M Group And LB Investments The Series B round has taken the social commerce platform's total funding to $62 million, making this its second investment in a year

Lifestyle social commerce platform Trell announced on Monday to have raised $45 million in a Series B round of funding led by financial group Mirae Asset, H&M Group and co-led by LB Investments. Previous investor(s), along with KTB Network, Samsung Ventures, and Fosun RZ Capital have also participated in this round.

With the closing of the Series B round, Trell's total funding raised has reached $62 million to date.

"We are thankful to have Mirae Asset, H&M Group, and LB Investments join us as our investors and partners. Trell has enabled millions of Indian language internet users to discover and buy lifestyle trends and we are grateful to have a community that has shown us incredible support, which has further fueled our need to diversify content creation, commerce in India and create sustainable opportunities for wealth creation and economic growth," said Pulkit Agrawal, co-founder, and chief executive officer, Trell.

Trell is planning to utilize the freshly infused capital to further develop its AI and ML technologies across regional languages as well as strengthen the team. Further, the funds will also help with the growth of community and commerce initiatives.

"Social commerce is a very interesting and growing space within the retail industry in India and globally. Trell has shown impressive growth over the years and we believe that it has the potential to become a global leader in this space. We are excited to be a part of their journey, supporting the founders and the team in their vision," shared Nanna Anderson, head of H&M CO: LAB, H&M Group's investment arm.

"Trell's roadmap and vision of empowering millions of Indian's to become micro-entrepreneurs has really resonated with us and we are glad to see the love that the platform has witnessed this past year. The team has an in-depth understanding of the diversity across the country which is the need of the hour. We believe the impact of the platform in the social commerce ecosystem is going to revolutionize the way people connect and consume content online, thereby helping them make more informed lifestyle choices and purchase decisions," stated Ashish Dave, Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund.

As a leading lifestyle community, with over 100 million downloads and more than 50 million monthly active users on its app, Trell provides a platform for millions of Indians to connect with like-minded individuals, discover lifestyle trends and share content around their interests and passions across categories such as beauty, fashion, wellness, health, ffood, TV reviews, travel, and gadgets, among others. Trell's vast content library features videos from the said categories in 8 regional languages garnering over 20 Billion monthly views. By the end of this year, the social commerce platform is looking to launch 6 more languages expanding its footprint to over 2000 cities and towns in India.

"Trell has become the launchpad for many up-and-coming D2C brands and advertisers, who are leveraging our community of regional content creators to advertise their products and services on the platform. Our understanding of the depth in the consumer ecosystem of India has helped many brands accelerate their journey to unlock the $100 billion market in India. 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," commented Bimal Kartheek Rebba, co-founder and chief operating officer, Trell.

In August 2020, Trell also launched its social commerce section on the app, enabling users to watch personalized product recommendations across beauty, personal care, and wellness categories that they can buy from within the app. In the last few months, Trell has onboarded over 500 personal care and beauty brands, with the most recent addition of Maybelline, L'Oréal and Garnier. Growing exponentially since its inception, Trell has also recorded fifteen-fold year-on-year growth and 30 per cent month-on-month growth on its transactions.

With the new addition of funds, Trell is also looking to expand its commerce operations by entering into the apparel, home care, mom, and baby-care categories in the months to come.

"Over the last few months, we have been leveraging our in-house AI/ML technology and neural networks to create user psychographics based on their behavioral patterns on the platform. This enables us to provide personalized content and product recommendations for them. We have also been focused on strengthening our product with some exciting new features, UI changes, and implementing stronger data security norms in the days to come to enable the best experiences for our users," added Arun Lodhi, co-founder, and chief technology officer, Trell.

Social commerce is worth $1.5 to $2 billion GMV market today and is likely to hit $60 billion to $70 billion in 2030. Accelerated by the pandemic, the ecosystem is estimated to grab 5 per cent of the Indian e-commerce market at a CAGR of 65 per cent between 2020 to 2025.