Pepper

Pepper (legally Pomegranate Technologies Inc., operating as usepepper.com; not to be confused with SoftBank's Pepper robot, Pepper Content, or Pepper Money) is a New York City-based vertical SaaS company founded in 2019 by Bowie Cheung (CEO), Chetan Narain (CTO), and Ivana Tesanovic (Co-founder/SVP), all of whom worked together at Uber Eats. The company set out to digitize independent food distributors — an estimated 25,000 small/mid-size players in North America that historically took most orders by voicemail or fax, in contrast to giants like Sysco and US Foods. Pepper launched its first market (NYC) in early 2020, including a pandemic-era consumer delivery product called 'Pepper Pantry.' It has since raised roughly $100M across four rounds: an early seed round (~$4M, backed at least in part by Greylock) around 2019-2020; a $16M Series A led by Index Ventures (Nov 30, 2021, with Greylock, Imaginary Ventures, BoxGroup, Moving Capital); a $30M Series B led by ICONIQ Growth (May 13, 2024, with Index Ventures, Greylock, Imaginary Ventures and Harmony Partners); and a $50M Series C led by Lead Edge Capital (Feb 20, 2026, with ICONIQ, Index Ventures, Greylock, Harmony Partners and Interplay). No valuation has been publicly disclosed for any round. The company has grown via acquisition, buying Kimelo (a San Francisco restaurant-supply ordering/SaaS startup, Aug 28, 2025) and Alima (a YC-backed startup modernizing food distribution for SMB/Latin American distributors, March 25, 2026). As of the Series C announcement (Feb 2026), Pepper reported serving 500+ distributors representing roughly $30B in annual GMV and 100,000+ active buying 'operators.' Named customers/case studies include Flanagan Foodservice, Palmer Food Services, Food Supply Inc., JD Food, Glacier Point, and Loffredo Fresh Foods.

Business model

Vertical B2B SaaS sold to independent food distributors, delivered as modular platform (Storefront, Sales Hub, Order Agent, Marketing Hub, Finance Hub, Price Management) with tiered pricing plus embedded payments and advertising revenue.

Subscription/usage-based SaaS fees from distributors, plus embedded payment processing fees and a supplier/manufacturer-funded digital advertising & marketing network.