Pine Labs, the well-known provider of commerce solutions and digital payment services to merchants, situated in India’s Silicon Valley, Bangalore, has just raked in an impressive $285 million in a new round of funding.
The funding took place through participation from public market crossover investors (that is, investors from the public equity market, who frequently invest in private undertakings). Notable names among the new investors included Baron Capital Group, Moore Strategic Ventures, Duro Capital, Marshall Wace, and Ward Ferry Management. Existing investors also participated in the funding, from Temasek and Lone Pine Capital, to Sunley House Capital.
With this fresh round of financing, Pinelab’s to date raise has reached a whopping $400 million. Post this financing, the new valuation of the company stands at more than $3 billion, but details have not yet been revealed.
The financing round has not come to a real end, however, as Pine Labs has called it as the “first close” of the round. It plans to further raise at least another $100 million through this round, which will be continuing on after the first close.
Chief Executive Officer of Pine Labs, Amish Rau, expressed excitement over the round, saying, “This is an exciting phase in our journey as we enter newer markets. We excel in enterprise merchant payments and now want to scale new frontiers in the online space as well, at the same time continue to power the credit and commerce needs of our offline merchant partners.” The company further added that the current financial round has also seen founders, stakeholders, and even employees, make a significant contribution towards secondary transactions.
Pine Labs is most prominently active in India and its neighboring South Asian countries, and the newly raised funds will be set aside for providing a wider selection and offering of services across its market countries. Additionally, the company also seeks to expand its popular buy-now-pay-later product offering in India, and spread it over to at least double of its current value. The company is known for creating Plutus, a PoS platform that is smartphone-friendly, and, among the other PoS devices designed by the Pine Labs, allows users to pay later after making a purchase, providing them with the option to revel in the convenience of smart EMI options and bank offers. The PoS services were launched in Malaysia a while back, and the combined number of payment portal terminals that the company has in India and Malaysia alone, is very close to the 5 lakh mark. It has admitted to processing transactions of more than $30 billion on an annual basis through a business overseeing 3700 cities. Back in December last year, the company had raised between $75-100 million through another round of financing.
Talking about the new partnership with Pine Labs, Marshall Wace Asia CEO Amit Rajpal said, “We are very excited to be a part of the technological transformation that Pine Labs is driving on the ground in payments and the multiple interlinkages and efficiencies it is able to create by providing faster, cost effective consumer access to a broader range of financial products such as BNPL (buy-now-pay-later), where it is driving a pioneering effort on behalf of the financial system. We are also excited about an Indian business being able to drive regional and potentially global adoption of its intellectual property and this represents significant optionality for the future.”
