Announcing Pepper's Series A Fundraise of $4.2 Million

Back in 2017, when I had to unwillingly take Anirudh up on his offer of joining his wing (a thing in BITS where you need to form a group of 10 people to get rooms), I wasn’t aware of what the journey would entail. Back then, we had just entered our second year, and I was still skeptical of my decision to not join IIT Dhanbhad. Had someone made me aware of all the things we would end up doing, I probably would have left Pepper not believing most of what they would have told me. Because that is the thing with dreams, they don’t seem possible or real till they are!

On October 16th, we would be celebrating 3 years of the idea of Pepper! Looking back at those three years, most of which were in college, I can say with fair confidence that we have had an interesting story! Some things that we ponder upon seem so weird that we still have a laugh about it. Amongst those things, I remember that in our third year at college, we had connected with a ‘business tycoon’, who in one of our meetings had asked for over 25% in sweat equity. The thing that we laugh upon is not that he asked for it but we actually considered giving it to him! From traveling to Bangalore in the middle of our final examinations only to get rejected by YC in the final round to pitching Lightspeed on the same day when I gave the last viva ever for BITS, it sure has been a dream run, if not perfect.

Although we are literally just starting out and have a long way to go, there are a few things that I have realized and would like to put it out there which may come in handy for people who are starting out early! I probably won’t say anything that people more qualified than me already haven’t spoken, but I would want to use this occasion to acknowledge those things that have shaped my perspective on all things that matter! I have tried to condense them into some points below -

a)    Always the people – One thing, that probably is the biggest realization for me is the fact that it is always about the people. We may have totally contradicting views on almost everything that we ever discuss, but if I have to do it all over again, I would want nobody but Anirudh by my side as my cofounder. If I have to pick our first few core team members again, I would only want to have Kishan, Himanshu & Aadesh. And If I get the chance to pick my interns again, I wouldn’t want anyone else but Pranav & Sudhanshu. I can probably say that about each and every employee that we have in the team right now. And the fact that I can say that is probably the biggest reason we have been able to do all of these things till now!

The most important thing in the world is family. And we have got one here at Pepper as well!

b)   Entrepreneurship is not cool – I wish I could say otherwise, but most of the days, you don’t get to work on some world-changing ideas nor do you get to work on something fancy every day. Entrepreneurship, in my opinion, is more about grit and determination to see things through more than anything while being okay with the chance of it not working out. That can be coding a website in a night or making 150 phone calls in a day because a project has suddenly fallen through. Thus, it is okay to not wanting to start up and you shouldn’t need to justify that to anyone!

c)    Be cognizant of your own privilege – Nobody can take away the hard work we have done and fun we have had while building Pepper from the ground up. But at every step of the way, more recently than before, I have had the chance to evaluate my own privilege. That, in all honesty, is the best exercise to teach yourself humility. Once you acknowledge that, building a company like ours that aims to cater to a lot of freelancers & people coming from tier 2 & tier 3 cities becomes more exciting :)

I am very thrilled for our Series A fundraise and would like to extend gratitude to all our investors, new as well as previous, who have shown such confidence in young 21-22-year old’s like us! With this fundraise, we reach a milestone where more people than ever are looking at us, with some expectations. We never expected to reach where we are today and we possibly cannot foresee where we will end up at! But what I can promise, is that tomorrow, everyone at Pepper will show up & will be working as hard as they can to take us to that unknown future. We will do that again and again, for weeks and months and probably years! And then we will see where that takes us. Because that is the only thing we can promise. To show up every day. We will do that and hope that Sir Woody Allen was right when he said - ”80% of success is just showing up.”

Read more about it here: https://yourstory.com/2020/10/funding-pepper-series-a-lightspeed-tech30-startup