It was Pulkit Agarwal's fourth year at IIT Bombay and he still hadn't been to a Ganesh pandal. Imagine that! Living in Mumbai and not visiting a Ganesh pandal! "This time, I’m definitely going to one," he thought and opened Google to search for the nearest pandal. Surprisingly, he couldn't find much information.
Then, a Mumbaikar friend of his came to his rescue. But, that day, Pulkit realised something. "In a big city like Mumbai, there is no place where a newbie can find new hang out spots or local places of interest. Most people don’t want to take the trouble of writing a long blog and uploading photographs," he says. Adamant to do something about it, Pulkit, along with three of his friends, Prashant Sachan, Bimal Kartheek Rebba and Arun Lodhi, founded Trell, a visual blogging app. Users can upload photographs of places they find interesting and give a few-words-long description called trails.
But do people really just wake up one morning and decide to create an app? No! They did not just say, "Let's create an app." It started off as a popular Instagram handle that gained more than 40,000 followers in just five months. They also organised meet-ups where people could share their travel experiences, stories and hacks. In a year, Pulkit switched cities from Mumbai to Bengaluru, and Trell followed.
"Want to know where you can find the best Maggi in town? Trell is there to help you out. It even tells you what are a few unique pets that you can find in a particular area," says Pulkit, excited about his 10-month-old app, which is also the only Indian start-up to win the Worldwide Mobile UX Awards 2017 against many Silicon Valley giants.
Reach Out: https://trell.co/