The startup ecosystem is evolving in India across various industries. Lately, food distribution e-commerce platform Pepper is making waves. It has secured investment of $30 million and the funding round was led by ICONIQ Growth. The other prominent participants included Harmony Partners, Index Ventures, Greylock and Imaginary. With the fresh influx of capital, the total funding of the startup is around $60 million.

Pepper was founded by former Uber Eats executive Bowie Cheung. It is empowering smaller and independent food distributors with the help of their advanced technology. It has an innovative approach and aims to bridge the gap between technology and independent distributors. It is mainly focusing on enhancing their capabilities in the competitive market.

Pepper provides ordering system designed for independent food distributors and supports them with catalogs of more than 100,000 items. The system is highly customized and distributors can launch their own mobile apps and websites for online order processing and payments.

Cheung stated that the focus of his startup is mainly on empowering independent distributors as they are often overlooked by larger players. It prioritizes distributor-facing strategies and also ensures that the brands of distributors take center stage instead of promoting its own identity.

The impact of Pepper is evident as its growth is witnessed substantially with customers experience graph moving northward by 23% increase in sales and 93% buyer retention. Its customer base has also doubled since its last funding round in 2021.

Moreover, the startup has expanded its services and now is a full-stack payment processor. It has re-imagined customer relationship management as well as software for sales representatives in food distribution.

Investors seem optimistic about the potential of Pepper in transforming the food distribution industry. The fresh investment is believed to be fueling mission to further develop advanced technologies.