Lightspeed leads $4.2 Mn Series A round in Pepper Content

Content marketplace Pepper Content has raised $4.2 million in its Series A funding round led by Lightspeed India and leading angels. This is the second financing round for the Mumbai-based company that raised Rs 2.2 crore from Titan Capital and over half a dozen angel investors in February, this year.

Pepper will use the fresh capital to start new categories - video and audio. It will expand into new geographies like Southeast Asia, according to the company’s press release. 

“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,” said Anirudh Singla, Co-founder, and CEO at Pepper.

Within three years of launch, Pepper claims to have a network of more than 30,000 creators with over 400 leading brands such as Amazon, Swiggy, Adobe among others using its platform. Pepper’s creators have produced over 100,000 content pieces. The company claims that creators’ on Pepper have earned $400,000 in fees since its inception.

Founded by Anirudh Singla and Rishabh Shekhar, Pepper helps brands, SMEs and individuals to get custom content across genres, verticals and languages. It claims to generate over $600,000 in revenues and is targeting $1 million ARR in the ongoing fiscal year.

Over the past few years, content marketing has picked up steam in India. Unlike other marketing gimmicks, content connects holistically with the target audience and enables engagement. While some large-scaled companies have in-house teams to generate content, the majority of startups (across all shapes and sizes) rely on third-party platforms like Pepper.

At present, there are a host of platforms that offer content marketing services to the local as well as global clients. Pepper majorly competes with LexiConn, Orangus, Mindworksglobal among many others.