Online content platform Pepper raises seed round from Titan Capital, YourStory

Mumbai headquartered online content platform Pepper Content has 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.

Other angel investors who participated in the round are Saurabh Srivastava, former chairman of Nasscom; Amit Ranjan, co-founder of online content aggregator Slideshare; Alok Mittal co-founder of SME lender Indifi; Sidharth Rao, chairman of digital agency Dentsu Webchutney; Ritesh Malik, co-founder of co-working space platform Innov8; Sanjay Tripathy, CEO of startup support platform Agilio Labs; Manan Maheshwari, co-founder of WYSH and Hemanshu Jain, co-founder of Diabeto.

The company plans to use the funds to expand its team in Mumbai and enhance its technology platform, a statement said. 

Founded in November 2017 by BITS Pilani alumni Anirudh Singla and Rishabh Shekhar, Pepper is an online content marketplace that caters to the content requirements of companies. It on-boards freelance writers on its platform to deliver different forms of contents including press releases, blogs, research articles and product descriptions. The company now plans to venture into design and other creative content formats.

Currently, Pepper claims to have 25,000 writers and 250 clients on its platform. It counts Swiggy, InfoEdge, Urban Company, BookMyShow, Bharat Matrimony, and Simplilearn among others as its clients.  It aims to target over 1,000 businesses and on-board 200,000 content creators over the next 18 months.

“Through Pepper’s technology platform, it will not only be able to scale content creation to the tunes of hundreds of thousands of content pieces but also be able to create a framework that allows virtual collaboration of creators through tools on the platform,” Singla, founder and CEO of Pepper said. 

Titan Capital has so far invested in over 70 startups in India and the US, as per information on its website. Some of the portfolio companies include hygiene brand Azah, craft beer startup Bira, bicycle brand Frog Cycles, online gaming platform Rein Games, fintechs such as OfBusiness and Khatabook.

Kalaari Capital-backed news portal YourStory in 2017 raised $3 million in a funding round from Qualcomm Ventures and 3One4 Capital. Overall it has raised $8 million, as per VCCEdge data.