Pepper Content, a content marketplace connecting global brands such as Google, Meta, Amazon and Adobe with more than 100,000 creators, has raised $14.3 million in a new round of funding as it looks set to expand into the U.S.
Bessemer Venture Partners led the Indian startup’s Series A funding round. Tanglin Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Titan Capital and angel investors including Gokul Rajaram, Ritesh Agarwal, Abhinav Sinha, Ankur Nagpal, Dheeraj Pandey, Ashish Gupta and Kunal Shah also participated in the new round, which sees the startup’s all -time raises to about $19 million.
Pepper Content helps companies identify and work with vetted professionals for their content marketing needs.
Anirudh Singla, co-founder and chief executive of Pepper Content, started the company in his college dorm while studying at BITS Pilani. Singla identified the whitespace when he was looking for a passive income to support his education, he said in an interview with Vidak For Congress.
“As a maker, I was only creating 30 to 40% of the time. The rest of the time I was bidding at prices that were ridiculously low,” he said.
The existing platforms were not tailored with local nuances, but it was clear that there was a huge demand for content as the arrival of telecom operator Jio Platforms, which undermined rivals with cheap mobile data rates, had suddenly expanded the market by hundreds. millions of users waiting to be served.
Pepper says creators must go through rigorous testing and vetting processes on its platform, a factor that has helped the startup improve and retain the quality of the talent it delivers to clients. The companies that have used Pepper keep coming back with more work, Singla said.
And the list of corporate clients has also grown tremendously in recent quarters, he said. Pepper Content works with more than 2,500 clients, including startups such as CRED and Groww, and more than 1,000 enterprises including Big Tech, Adani Enterprises, Hindustan Unilever, HDFC Bank, Tata Capital and Binance.
“We want to make this platform a superpower for brands and creators alike. The last talent revolution to come out of India was Infosys, TCS for tech talent in the 1990s. Pepper Content is here to unleash the next one by giving high-quality creative and marketing talent access to global opportunities,” said Rishabh Shekhar, co-founder and chief operating officer of Pepper.
The startup is posting $8 million in annual revenue and plans to expand into the US in the coming weeks, Singla said. Pepper has also expanded its services to include video content, graphic design and language translation in recent quarters.
“Pepper’s value proposition to be the scale-out partner for enterprises worldwide for high-quality, on-demand and on-budget content production has really made its mark. In addition, we believe Pepper’s SaaS offering to help creators and enterprises create , collaboration and driving content activities has resonated strongly in the US and global market,” said Dev Khare, Partner at Lightspeed India, in a statement.