🤯 How Trell Went From $120M Dream To 94% Revenue Crash

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Today at a Glance:

• ☠️ 1 Failed Startup → Trell

• ⚠️ 2 Mistakes → Chasing vanity growth over trustworthy numbers

• 🧠 3 Lessons Learned → Instrument truth, not hype

• 🔗 The Runway Insights → From Zero to $25B in 17 Years: The Inside Story of HubSpot’s Domination Strategy

• 💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar → LineWise raises $1.1M (Pre-Seed) to eliminate unplanned downtime and yield loss in manufacturing

💃 Buy, buy, buy

• Nov 2016 — Trell was founded by Pulkit Agrawal, Arun Lodhi, Prashant Sachan, and Bimal K. Rebba in Mumbai, aiming to share local lifestyle experiences via short videos.

• Mar 2017 — 💰 Raised $250K (angel round).

• Jul 2017 — 🚀 The team launched the Trell app on Android/iOS as a visual blogging platform for travel, food, and local adventure content.

  • Early traction came from Instagram where their content gained 40k followers in 4 months.

• Jul 2018 — 💰 Raised $1.3 million (Pre-Seed) from BEENEXT and WEH Ventures.

• Mar 2020 — 💰 Raised $4 million (Seed) from Sequoia Capital.

• Aug 2020 — 🤳 Trell pivoted to social commerce, introducing the in-app Trell Shop for beauty, personal care, and wellness products.

  • Users could shop from influencer videos.

  • 💰 Raised $11.5 million (Series A) funding led by KTB Network and Samsung Ventures, boosting expansion of its commerce model.

• Jul 2021 — 💰 Raises $45 million (Series B) (led by Mirae Asset, H&M Group, etc.), valuing Trell around $120–130 million post-money.

  • By this point Trell claims 1 million+ orders fulfilled on the platform and 18 million content creators engaged.

• Sep 2021 — Acquired Womaniya, a women-only content community in India, to expand into regional languages and women-centric content.

🤔 Wait, is that real?

• Mar 2022 — 🚨 Whistleblower allegations sparked an EY forensic audit into Trell’s finances.

  • Investigators found evidence of related-party transactions and that Trell allegedly inflated its revenue, GMV, and user metrics by 30–40% (even using bots).

  • Serious financial irregularities came to light.

• Mar 2022 — ⚠️ Trell’s funding plans collapsed amid the probe.

  • The company laid off ~300 employees (~50% of staff) as investors and founders clashed over the audit findings.

• Apr 2022 — ⚠️ In a bid to raise cash, Trell sold ~10% stake in AppsForBharat (its investment in a devotional app) to existing investors for about $9 million.

  • This provided short-term liquidity as Trell “runs out of cash.”

• Jun 2022 — ⚠️ Creator crisis: About 100 more employees left as Trell failed to pay many content creators for months.

  • The startup faced legal notices for unpaid dues (e.g. a ₹47 lakh payment dispute with a digital agency).

• Aug 2022 — ⛔️ Co-founder Pulkit Agrawal denied any wrongdoing publicly, calling the audit an internal review and claiming reports of fraud are baseless.

  • He said Trell would refocus and aim for break-even by end of FY22.

• Early 2023 — Trell pivoted away from social commerce entirely, rebranding itself as a lifestyle-centric short video app (dropping e-commerce features) to try and regain traction.

• Mar 2024 — ⚠️ Financials revealed a collapse:

  • Trell’s FY23 revenue was only ₹4.77 Cr, a 94% drop from ₹80.6 Cr in FY22.

  • The company posted a ₹59 Cr loss for FY23 and was effectively moribund.

• 2023–24 — 👋🏻 Peak XV (Sequoia India) gave up on Trell and exited with 78% loss on its investment.

🌮 Key Takeaways:

• 🧽 Metrics hygiene

  • Lock a single source of truth for GMV and take-rate.

  • Run monthly mini-audits (internal or third-party) on order reconciliation and returns.

  • Create an observability dashboard where DAU/MAU spikes are automatically flagged if traffic quality (e.g., % new device IDs, retention, add-to-cart) deviates beyond control limits.

• 🤝🏻 Creator payouts as SLOs

  • Publish a payout SLO (e.g., T+14 days) and display live status to every creator.

  • Miss the SLO? Auto-credit a late-fee bonus.

  • Treat creators like enterprise vendors, not “influencers who can wait”.

🌮 Key Takeaways:

• 🤳 Creator trust

  • Ship a Creator Wallet with daily accruals, instant withdrawal up to a limit, dispute tracking, and a public uptime SLA.

  • When cash is tight, communicate timelines, don’t go dark.

• 🛍️ Buyer trust

  • Badge SKUs with verified creator + authenticity checks

  • Show post-purchase NPS and returns policy before checkout.

• 🏦 Capital trust

  • Publish a quarterly trust letter to investors and staff — key metrics, misses, corrective actions.

  • If there’s an audit/review, own the narrative early.

🌮 Key Takeaways:

• 🚀 Category sequencing

  • Start with categories that have high repeat + medium AOV + low return rates (beauty/personal care can work, but watch returns and authenticity).

  • Benchmark against category leaders (i.e. Nykaa’s beauty dominance) to know what “healthy” looks like for margins and reorder cadence.

• Creator commission vs CAC

  • Model creator commission as CAC at a cohort level.

  • If net CAC via creators > performance ads at the same LTV, throttle creator deals or shift to fixed-fee + rev-share hybrids.

• Returns & fake-review guardrails

  • Ingest SKU-level return reasons and auto-deprioritise products/creators with high post-purchase dissatisfaction.

  • Enforce review integrity or your “shopability” corrodes.

🔗 The Runway Insights

• From Zero to $25B in 17 Years: The Inside Story of HubSpot’s Domination Strategy (Link)

• When should founders sell their shares (and how much)? (Link)

• Your complete guide to revenue leakage (Link)

• 12 books for the busy founder (Link)

• Bootstrapping vs Fundraising (Link)

💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar

• LineWise raises $1.1M (Pre-Seed) to eliminate unplanned downtime and yield loss in manufacturing (Link)

• Hush Security raises $11M (Seed) to transform machine identities (Link)

• Tevo Global raises an undisclosed amount (Seed) led by EZTech and UX Foundation to become the leading company in AI apps and services (Link)

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