About the Platform.

Pebble is a hyperlocal content marketplace, connecting reporters and publishers directly. For the first time in the world, reporters can set the price of the story while publishers can buy a story on per piece basis. Publishers pay no subscription fee.
Pebble has been founded by

Anil Kumar whose last company Locovida has been invested in by Times Internet Ltd. Prior to these two startups, Anil headed the digital business at Amar Ujala where he built a strong internet presence for Amar Ujala.

Whom do we cater to?

We are a b2b platform and intend to solve the content and price discovery problem for the media industry. Our clients are publishers who need content from across the world but can’t get verified content from small places.

What do we offer to our consumers?

A publisher is heavily dependent on their own content writing teams, their field reporters network or from news wire agencies. However, these models are costly and inefficient.
Today, the readership (print, tv and online) is reaching Tier 2 and 3 towns and cities, thanks to deeper penetration of smartphones and internet service providers.
Using existing content creation and acquisition models, a publisher can’t reach this last mile new user. Pebble solves that for a publisher. Simply by creating an account on Pebble, the publisher gets access to hyperlocal stories from across the country (and in future, across the world) by a simple click of a button. The publisher can choose the story that makes sense to their current audience. Or they can launch a new category, language or an edition by buying stories for that audience.

Content writers on Pebble are connected to the media industry and are verified people.

Also Read: Platform Feature – Banihal
What motivated us to start up?

My previous startup Locovida was helping regional publishers build a scalable and profitable digital business by offering them technology, ad revenues, traffic and advisory. We worked with more than 180 publishers in the country. However, we realised that each publisher is just trying to milk their existing (loyal) reader many times over and not creating content for the new audience that exists beyond their stronghold.