Pine Labs’ valuation tops $2 bn on closing funding from Lone Pine Capital

Unicorn fintech corporation Pine Labs has raised an undisclosed funding spherical led by billionaire hedge fund supervisor Stephen Mandel-started Lone Pine Money, getting the valuation of the Noida-centered company to over $2 billion. This would make it the most valued fintech corporation in the region just after Paytm and Walmart-owned PhonePe. The company did not expose the total it has raised from Lone Pine, but in accordance to business sources, the funding is about $75-100 million. US-centered Lone Pine’s financial investment follows the strategic financial investment made by Mastercard in January 2020, when Pine Labs attained unicorn status or $one billion valuation.

“We are thrilled to welcome Lone Pine as an investor throughout this enjoyable and transformative phase of Pine Labs’ progress journey,” claimed B Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs.

Modest businesses and customers are quickly adopting to electronic commerce and contactless checkout. Pine Labs is also viewing great uptake in Pay Afterwards providers and has now enabled just about 150,000 shops for this. “It’s time to spend heavily in offline and on the net commerce across India and SEA (Southeast Asia),” claimed Rau.

Rau, who joined Pine Labs as CEO early this yr, provides two decades of practical experience in details technological know-how, finance and fintech. His start out-up Citrus Pay, which was funded by Sequoia India, was acquired by PayU in 2016 in one of the premier fintech acquisitions.

Mala Gaonkar, Portfolio Manager and Running Director at Lone Pine, claimed that the Pine Labs staff is leveraging essential structural changes getting place across payments and fintech globally. This consists of integration of software package and payments at the level-of-sale and the digitisation of little-to-medium enterprises. Also, there is fast adoption of get-now-pay out-later on choices.

“We are thrilled to husband or wife with Pine Labs as they innovate at scale in the payments and service provider commerce space, benefiting customers, retailers and financial institutions,” claimed Gaonkar. “We look ahead to the road ahead.”

Earlier in December, Pine Labs and Mastercard jointly announced that they will broaden their integrated “pay later” resolution to five South-East Asian marketplaces early up coming yr.

From its beginnings as an offline retail payment supplier a ten years ago, Pine Labs has advanced into presenting payment acceptance technological know-how, saved benefit products and solutions, in-shop purchaser credit history and other service provider remedies in India, Southeast Asia and the Center East.

Right now, Pine Labs serves much more than 150,000 retailers in three,700 towns across Asia and the Center East. This yr Pine Labs made an financial investment and fashioned a strategic partnership with Malaysia-centered corporation Fave, which provides QR payments and loyalty cashback to dining establishments and merchants.

Just about 50,000 of Fave’s and Pine Labs’ retailers in Southeast Asia will benefit instantly from the partnership.

Pine Labs competes with other quickly-rising fintech corporations these as BharatPe, Mswipe, Paytm and Razorpay. Delhi-centered BharatPe, which provides payment technological know-how and electronic lending for offline businesses, which include kiranas, is viewing a a few-fold progress in transaction benefit and two-fold progress in volumes amid the pandemic. The corporation is by now clocking an annualised transaction benefit of $eight billion, of which $six billion is QR (swift reaction) code and $2 billion Swipe organization.

Freshly-fashioned fintech unicorn Razorpay is also betting major on aiding little businesses digitise. The Bengaluru-centered corporation is launching a string of products and solutions, from insurance policies to vernacular language aid, aimed at empowering the up coming phase of electronic progress for little businesses in India. The company ideas to realize $50 billion TPV (whole payment quantity) by the end of 2021.

The electronic payments space in India is expected to rise five-fold to achieve $one trillion by 2023, and would be led by progress in cellular payments, in accordance to a report by financial providers corporation Credit history Suisse.

Highlights:

. Pine Labs crosses $2 billion valuation, just after financing spherical from Lone Pine.

. Funding is about $75 million-$100 million, in accordance to business sources.

. This would make it the most valued fintech corporation in the region at the rear of Paytm and PhonePe.

. New funding follows an financial investment made by Mastercard this yr when Pine Labs turned a unicorn.

. Digital payments space in India is expected to rise fivefold to achieve $one trillion by 2023.