Indian merchant platform Pine Labs raised fresh $315 million in funding on July 6, 2021, led by Fidelity Management and Research Company BlackRock as part of its continuing funding round. The company has closed the investment round with the recent infusion, taking the funding to $600 million.
On Tuesday, a statement released by the digital payment provider stated that Ishana, Tree Line, Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers, IIFL AMC and Kotak are the other new investors. IIFL AMC directed its assets via its late-stage tech fund.
The Noida-based firm had opened the financial round in May 2021, with a $285-million fundraising from a group of investors, namely Baron Capital Group and Moore Strategic Ventures. Pine Labs said it “continues to be well-financed and has been Ebitda profitable for several years.”
With the current close, the valuation of the startup stands at $3 billion. The recent investment comes when the digital payment provider is planning a US-based initial public offering (IPO) within the next 18 months. The startup boasts of being the largest POS player by processing around $30 billion of payments annually.
The startup is among largest POS service providers
Pine Labs processes around 14% of all card payments through its network of about 600,000 POS machines. Its cloud-based SaaS platform, Plutus, supports payments across different modes, including gift cards, loyalty points, and credit (EMI), by bringing together multiple issuers and acquirer banks on a single platform.
“Over the last year, Pine Labs has made significant progress in its Offline to Online strategy in India and the direct-to-consumer play in Southeast Asia. Our full-stack approach to payments and merchant commerce has allowed us to grow in-month merchant partnerships by nearly 100% over the last year,” said CEO B Amrish Rau.
Pine Labs is effectively the only player in gift card management in India, with more than 95 percent market share. It has also become a leading player in offline POS consumer durable financing with a 90 percent market share outside Bajaj Finance. It offers EMIs tied up with more than 120 brands, 35 lenders, and 150,000 merchants for fees.
It allows its banking partners to offer no-cost EMIs to credit card users and debit card, customers. Its buy now pays later (BNPL) has scaled to spend $2 billion of consumer loans (no-cost EMIs) in FY20 with ATS of `25,000 in India and plans to expand the service to five Southeast Asian markets in 2021.
