Pepper Content Pvt. Ltd, which runs content writing and services platform, on Thursday said it has raised $14.3 million (Rs 110 crore) as a part of its extended Series A funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.
Pepper Content's latest round also saw participation from Tanglin Venture Partners, Lightspeed, Titan Capital, and global players like Gokul Rajaram, Ritesh Agarwal, Abhinav Sinha, Ankur Nagpal, Dheeraj Pandey, Ashish Gupta and Kunal Shah.
The firm plans to use the fresh capital to strengthen its US footprint and branching out into graphic design, language translations and video content creation.
“Pepper Content is here to unleash the next talent revolution by enabling high-quality creative and marketing talent to get access to global opportunities. As we enter the next phase of our journey of revolutionising content creation across the globe, we are excited to have partners like Bessemer Venture Partners and other credible, marquee investors. What Salesforce has done for sales, we will do for the content ecosystem,” said Anirudh Singla and Rishabh Shekhar, founders of Pepper Content.
Founded in 2017 by Singla and Shekhar, the startup functions as an online marketplace that services the content requirements of companies.
It leverages freelance writers on its platform to deliver content pieces including blogs, research articles, and press releases, among others. It is also planning to venture into design and other content formats.
In October 2020, the Mumbai-based startup secured $4.2 million (Rs 30.7 crore) in its Series A round.
The company claims to have grown 16 times in terms of revenue in the last 14 months alone. It aims for a high double-digit ARR growth by this year end.
"We firmly believe that the future of work is on-demand driven and we love the approach that Pepper is taking to build a powerful content marketing stack that helps startups and enterprises to work more strategically with expert on-demand freelance talent and enable workflows and collaboration tools to create great quality content," said Anant Vidur Puri, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners.
"Pepper's value proposition to be the scale-out partner to enterprises globally for high quality, on-demand and on-budget content production has really found its mark. In addition, we believe Pepper's SaaS offering to help creators and enterprises to create, collaborate and drive content operations has found strong market resonance in the US and globally," said Dev Khare, Partner at Lightspeed India.
Pepper has onboarded over 1,000 enterprises and fast-growing startups, it added in the statement.
US-based venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, which has been investing in India since 2006, has raised a new dedicated India fund with a corpus of $220 million, the first such country specific ever raised by the firm.
In February 2020, Pepper Content raised Rs 2.2 crore as part of its seed funding from a clutch of investors.
