Pepper Content is an India-based content-mediation platform that bridges the gap between organizations looking for compelling content and talented freelance content creators and individual writers. It constantly facilitates and mediates the demand-and-supply chain for content-based services. Pepper Content aims at building the world’s largest content marketplace platform which connects businesses and organizations with creative professionals. Headquartered in Mumbai, the content-mediation start-up Pepper Content was co-founded in 2017 by Anirudh Singla, Rishank Pandey, and Rishabh Shekhar.
About the founders
Anirudh Singla, an alumnus of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, got the idea for Pepper when he tried to get an internship offer in content writing. He saw that the sector was largely informal and unorganized. Hundreds of talented content creators had to face difficulties while searching for a job in the domain. He felt the need for an organized and standardized platform that could connect creators with their potential employers. So, Anirudh along with his batchmates created Pepper.
Currently, Anirudh Singla is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and Rishabh Shekhar is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at their self-grown start-up Pepper Content.
Rishabh is also an alumnus of BITS Pilani and was Anirudh’s friend during their stay at the institute.
Scope
Since the rise of the Internet, content creation and its consumption are at an all-time high. According to some reports by Quoracreative (2019), over three-fourths of the total internet users reported that they read blogs on regular basis. In such a situation there seems to be an urge for a large pool of creative content writers who can create compelling content rapidly. In India, every corporation is using some form of content strategy to market its products or to secure business connections.
Pepper Content is one of India’s leading start-ups in this segment that handles everything from content ideation to delivery. Today Pepper Content is serving 2500+ businesses and organizations with a team of 1,00,000+ content creators.
Funding and revenue
With over one hundred thousand enthusiastic content creators Pepper has been able to get over Rs. 1.75 crore in revenue for the year 2020. According to Crunchbase (a reliable source of data for companies and investments), Pepper Content has been able to secure a total funding amount of $18.7 million. The Mumbai-based start-up is funded by 29 investors with Bessemer Venture Partners and Tanglin Venture Partners being the most recent ones. Some other well-known investors of the company include Kunal Shah (founder and CEO of CRED), Abhinav Sinha (COO of OYO), Gaurav Munjal (founder of Unacademy), and Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.
Future plans and expected expansions
As stated by Rishabh Shekhar (COO), Pepper is aiming to expand its client base, and it can be expected that it will be able to get over 2,00,000+ content creators over the next 15 months. The brand will also actively hire across sales, operations, marketing, technical capabilities, and other related domains.
Recently, in June 2022, Pepper raised a whopping $14.3 million to expand to the US market. The company is motivated to skip the traditional route of international expansion followed by Indian firms (via the Middle East and South Asian markets). Shekhar explicitly mentioned the factor that motivated them to jump directly to the US was the “seamless acceptance” of Pepper’s products during trials.
What Pepper Content offers?
Talking about the organizations, Pepper offers them the customized content solution by mediating content from the best pool of content creators across the nation. It caters to their demands for any and every content in a time frame decided by the organization. Blogs and articles written by the writers of Pepper get effectively screened by their editors and are delivered on time to their customers.
Pepper also provides its customers with fast and quality posts that can go up on their social media handles, in set time frames. Based on the previous customer feedback of the organization, Pepper will decide which kind of posts should go up.
Pepper has recently equipped its platform with some other services apart from content writing. These services include Graphic Design, Language Translation, Subtitling, and Video Content Creation. Pepper supports translations and subtitling in more than 45 languages.
How is Pepper Content different from its competitors?
The USP of Pepper is an AI-enabled platform that automatically segregates content writers through a systematic background check process (for example – experience in writing, niche, etc.) and places them in one of the several predetermined slabs, as per result.
On the other side, firms that want to get their content creation work done, provide requirements based on the content they require (like articles, blogs, videos, genre, themes, etc.). After this has been done, Pepper’s smart recommender engine analyses the brief and selects the right set of creators, writers, and editors.
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What is PepperType.ai?
In February 2021 Pepper Content launched an AI-enabled content generator called PepperType.ai. The tool is able to assess the information fed to it and allow creators to generate countless well-curated ideas and content within a few seconds.
The type of content it can produce includes blog ideas, tweets, newsletters, product descriptions, podcasts, and marketing ideas.
This assistive tool is built on top of GPT3, a language algorithm by Elon Musk’s OpenAI, and is expected to generate short-form content copies and ideas.
Who are the customers of Pepper Content?
Pepper Content is trusted by over 2500 brands when it comes to delivering quality content on time. Several small and medium enterprises, start-ups, unicorns, and even giant MNCs are also being served by Pepper Content. According to some reports, more than 70 unicorns in India are currently using Pepper Content for their content creation needs. Top multinational firms like Adobe, Amazon, Directi, Adani Enterprises, P&G, etc. are also clients of the Mumbai-based start-up Pepper Content.
How is the pricing of content calculated?
Pepper Content charges its customers on the basis of certain factors like the type of industry, number of total assignments, total word count, content vertical, and the expertise level of the creator that is engaged in the project.
