Lightspeed India leads $4.2 mn in content marketplace Pepper

Content creation services platform Pepper Content has secured $4.2 million (about Rs 30 crore) in a Series A funding round led by venture capital firm Lightspeed India.

A host of angel investors including Beerud Sheth, founder, Upwork; Balaji Srinivasan, Coinbase CTO, ex-GP at a16z; Gaurav Munjal, founder, Unacademy; Aakrit Vaish, founder, Haptik; Miten Sampat, ex-CSO, Times Internet; Akhil Paul, Caparo Group; Utsav Somani of iSeed and AngelList and Dilip Khandelwal, ex-MD, SAP Labs India participated in this round.

The Mumbai-based startup will use the fresh capital to enter into newer content categories such as video and audio besides expanding into new geographies like Southeast Asia, according to a statement.

The funding comes just 10 months after it raised $306,183 in a seed round led by Titan Capital, an investment fund launched by Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, and online media company YourStory Media.

Founded in November 2017 by BITS Pilani alumni Anirudh Singla and Rishabh Shekhar, Pepper is an online content marketplace. It on-boards freelance content writers, graphic designers, language specialists and editors on its platform to deliver different forms of contents including articles, blogs, research articles, case studies, marketing collaterals, website content, and product descriptions. According to the company, its curated creators have created more than 100,000 content pieces through the platform, earning $400,000 in creator fees in the first two years.

“Our mission is to disrupt the entire content creation industry at scale and create a stronger, high quality, and more organized ecosystem for content creators. Imagine us being able to build virtual content teams for any company globally, by providing them a product that simplifies content operations and gives the customer the ability to strategize, create, distribute and manage all their content projects at one place.” Singla said.

Pepper claims to have a client base of over 400 firms including commerce platforms such as Amazon and Swiggy; financial services and insurance companies such as Max Bupa, PayTM, and Edelweiss; healthcare providers such as Apollo Hospitals; software companies such as Adobe and Cerner.

Funding in the content startups space has been sparse. In August, Bengaluru-based cataloguing and content management platform Text Mercato raised Rs 4.85 crore ($646,000) in a funding round led by equity crowdfunding platform 1Crowd. Hong Kong based startup accelerator Betatron, and angel investors, including former CEO of HSBC Africa Andrew Dell and Sequent Software CFO Raaj Shah, participated in the round.