Pine Labs’ valuation tops $2 bn on closing funding from Lone Pine Capital
Unicorn fintech corporation Pine Labs has lifted an undisclosed funding round led by billionaire hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel-founded Lone Pine Cash, using the valuation of the Noida-based mostly company to more than $2 billion. This can make it the most valued fintech corporation in the state immediately after Paytm and Walmart-owned PhonePe. The company did not expose the amount it has lifted from Lone Pine, but in accordance to field sources, the funding is about $seventy five-100 million. US-based mostly Lone Pine’s investment follows the strategic investment created by Mastercard in January 2020, when Pine Labs attained unicorn status or $1 billion valuation.
“We are thrilled to welcome Lone Pine as an investor for the duration of this fascinating and transformative stage of Pine Labs’ advancement journey,” said B Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs.
Compact organizations and individuals are rapid adopting to digital commerce and contactless checkout. Pine Labs is also observing tremendous uptake in Pay Later providers and has now enabled just about one hundred fifty,000 retailers for this. “It’s time to commit heavily in offline and on line commerce across India and SEA (Southeast Asia),” said Rau.
Rau, who joined Pine Labs as CEO early this year, brings two a long time of practical experience in information and facts technological innovation, finance and fintech. His get started-up Citrus Pay, which was funded by Sequoia India, was acquired by PayU in 2016 in one of the biggest fintech acquisitions.
Mala Gaonkar, Portfolio Manager and Taking care of Director at Lone Pine, said that the Pine Labs group is leveraging crucial structural modifications using location across payments and fintech globally. This contains integration of software package and payments at the level-of-sale and the digitisation of tiny-to-medium enterprises. Also, there is fast adoption of purchase-now-fork out-later on choices.
“We are fired up to husband or wife with Pine Labs as they innovate at scale in the payments and service provider commerce house, benefiting individuals, merchants and fiscal establishments,” said Gaonkar. “We seem forward to the road ahead.”
Earlier in December, Pine Labs and Mastercard jointly introduced that they will broaden their integrated “pay later” solution to 5 South-East Asian marketplaces early following year.
From its beginnings as an offline retail payment company a decade ago, Pine Labs has progressed into supplying payment acceptance technological innovation, stored value merchandise, in-shop shopper credit rating and other service provider answers in India, Southeast Asia and the Center East.
Now, Pine Labs serves much more than one hundred fifty,000 merchants in three,700 cities across Asia and the Center East. This year Pine Labs created an investment and formed a strategic partnership with Malaysia-based mostly corporation Fave, which provides QR payments and loyalty cashback to eating places and vendors.
Virtually fifty,000 of Fave’s and Pine Labs’ merchants in Southeast Asia will reward quickly from the partnership.
Pine Labs competes with other rapid-developing fintech organizations these types of as BharatPe, Mswipe, Paytm and Razorpay. Delhi-based mostly BharatPe, which provides payment technological innovation and digital lending for offline organizations, together with kiranas, is observing a three-fold advancement in transaction value and two-fold advancement in volumes amid the pandemic. The corporation is currently clocking an annualised transaction value of $eight billion, of which $6 billion is QR (brief response) code and $2 billion Swipe business enterprise.
Recently-formed fintech unicorn Razorpay is also betting large on aiding tiny organizations digitise. The Bengaluru-based mostly corporation is launching a string of merchandise, from insurance to vernacular language aid, aimed at empowering the following stage of digital advancement for tiny organizations in India. The company designs to realize $fifty billion TPV (full payment quantity) by the finish of 2021.
The digital payments house in India is predicted to increase 5-fold to attain $1 trillion by 2023, and would be led by advancement in cellular payments, in accordance to a report by fiscal providers corporation Credit Suisse.
