Pranav Sood is the founder and CEO of Trellis. Trellis is enterprise tracking software for the cannabis industry. The company has origins in Toronto but was recently accepted into and subsequently funded by the Gateway Accelerator program in Oakland, California.

Pranav, tell my audience about yourself. I know you’re from Canada but perhaps you can talk a bit more about your background in software and how you came to start Trellis.

Pranav Sood: I grew up in Toronto and went to business school in Canada. After graduating, I launched a small start-up while maintaining my day job doing consulting at Deloitte. After wrapping up the business and leaving Deloitte, I took a role with Hudson’s Bay Company / Saks Fifth Avenue / Lord & Taylor managing their IT procurement portfolio. Around this time, the medical cannabis laws changed in Canada and that drew me in. I wanted to combine my passion for technology, supply chain and retail to build a solution for an industry that I believe in and saw significant growth potential. After prototyping, we received an investment from a Canadian licensed producer and ramped up the development of the product. Shortly after, we were accepted into the Gateway Accelerator program in California, so I moved to Oakland and launched our California office.

Pranav, are you a grower yourself? If so, how has your experience in growing help you build the software?

Pranav Sood: I’m personally not a grower, but I’m fascinated with the plant and the growing process. I’m also passionate about building solutions to simplify complex processes, so getting into this project I ended up working very closely with our beta customers to really understand their workflow. It’s important that to us that we spend time with our customers to understand how they are using the product and how we can continue to improve the user experience. This only happens when you take the time to understand the use case.

I know you founded Trellis in Canada. You’ve since moved your company to California. Please talk about that move. Regulation is coming in 2018, how has the move along with regulation affected the company?

Pranav Sood: We were founded in Canada under the federal medical regulations (ACMPR). We then adapted the software for the California market, which really accelerated the value of the platform as we got exposure to areas of the industry that didn’t exist in Canada, extraction being a primary example. The result of combining both markets for us is a strong compliance tool based on the Canadian federal market and a best in class inventory management tools geared towards operators. With adult use regulations launching in California, we are definitely experiencing the impact of market growth.

Do you still have a base of operations in Canada?

Pranav Sood: Yes, our entire development and engineering team is based in Toronto, while a majority of our sales and marketing is based in Oakland.

In what ways are the Canadian cannabis and American cannabis industries different from one another? In what ways are they the same?

Pranav Sood: The regulatory landscape is very different. Canada has generally demonstrated a slow and methodical approach to marijuana regulations with a well-paced market expansion, whereas the US states tend to move quicker in a shorter period of time. Canada is generally more risk averse, needing a thoroughly planned framework whereas US states tend to adopt a “we will figure it out as we go” methodology. And of course, the minor detail of Canada regulating cannabis at the federal level avoiding some of the key issues that operators in US states incur, like banking.

Your biggest customer invested in Trellis. What’s the name of that company? In what way(s) has that investment impacted the way you do business with other grow operations? What have you learned from this investment?

Pranav Sood: We did receive an investment from one of the Canadian Licensed Producers, but most of the value we received from the relationship was less monetary. Having access to their facility and federally compliant standard operating procedures gave us a starting point to build our product framework. After that, we started working with California operators that either compete with or surpass the scale of operations in Canada and that’s really what allowed Trellis to grow.

In Canada approx. 30 companies have a license to grow marijuana. When Trellis moved to California multiple vendors have licenses to grow marijuana. How has this fragmentation of the market affected the company? Do you see more opportunity with this sea change?

Pranav Sood: California’s market size is unparalleled and it allowed us to connect with operators that wanted to help us refine our software to solve real problems. We have access to more operators in a square mile than an entire province in Canada coming in all shapes and sizes. Not only that, but in Canada, the licenses were vertically integrated meaning it’s the same operator that is cultivating, manufacturing and selling to the end patient, whereas in California the licenses are segmented. Our product fit perfectly since we originally built it for a vertically integrated market and now in California, we can use the same platform to help the entire market from cultivation, manufacturing, and distribution. We definitely see a lot of opportunity in California, but with adult use regulations coming to Canada, who knows which market becomes larger.

Tell us about Trellis’s validation documentation. How will this documentation help mitigate compliance issues?

Pranav Sood: We plan to develop validation documentation similar to the requirements set out by the FDA. This is not a requirement in the cannabis industry, however, we see value in going through the exercise especially if the industry ever does become federally regulated in the US.

In what way(s) does Trellis differ from its competition?

Pranav Sood: Our software tends to be much more user-focused and the feedback we receive is that the product is easier to use. Coupling that with a real focus on customer support, providing timely communication and continually improving the platform, we are rapidly expanding our market share.

How as the market reacted to Trellis? Since moving to California how many new customers has Trellis acquired? Any plans for future funding rounds?

Pranav Sood: We are growing approximately 50% every month since launching the product in 2017. We will be launching our Series A round in the middle of 2018.

Your software seems to be applicable to all different types of grows. How did you come to invent this product with so many different types of consumers in mind?

Pranav Sood: I may have answered this above, but it was a combination of starting with a strong compliance foundation and then collaborating with as many operators as we could to make the product as versatile as possible.

Does Trellis plan on creating software for the home grow market?

Pranav Sood: We would love to work with home grow operators that have a passion for tracking their plants and seeing the data behind their plants. Thus far, it has generally been a compliance-focused need, however, it is a powerful tool that we want to get into the hands of as many growers as possible.

What’s the future for Trellis?

Pranav Sood: We have new software features that will be rolling out in 2018 that we hope will continue to push the industry forward towards innovation. In addition, we will be expanding to additional US and international markets.

Trellis Grows

Trellis Twitter

Trellis Facebook

(Disclaimer: the owner of CheapHomeGrow.com doesn’t endorse or support any of our interviewee’s answers. Their opinions and answers are their own. We simply ask the questions and publish their answers)