How a 23 year old created a $8M yearly revenue content marketplace business

The Neon Show

India’s largest Content Marketplace with 1L+ creators, 2500+ customers, out of which 70+ are Unicorns.

Does that ring any bells?

We’re talking about Pepper Content, founded by Anirudh Singla, in his 2nd year of undergrad college.

Pepper’s journey started when Anirudh during his college decided to take up freelancing and content creation to fund his graduation all by himself. He then realised the potential of content creators in India and decided to organize it by creating an Indian marketplace for the same.

In our conversation with Anirudh, we dive into the journey of building and scaling Pepper to $8 Million ARR Content-marketplace in under 5 years and their plans ahead.

Notes -

03:06 - Baniya-family background, freelance exposure while at college

07:06 - First few steps to building a marketplace

11:06 - Splitting equity early-on

12:46 - Reaching out to 80+ VCs and Angel Investors while raising their 1st round

17:20 - What made them raise their 1st round?

18:43 - Scaling from $500k ARR to $8 Million ARR in 14 months

21:20 - Client base: 550+ Active customers and 70+ Unicorns

24:20 - Need to focus on a SaaS based approach for Content

26:15 - “Hustle doesn’t scale. By the same time what scale’s is the mindset of thinking big enough!”

28:25 - “Not building a family, but instead building a high quality sports team.”

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