Even as a US IPO is looming over the horizon, leading merchant payments unicorn Pine Labs gobbled up $150 million in a mix of primary and secondary funding. The funding was raised from Alpha Wave Global, which is formerly known as Falcon Edge.
With this, the fintech unicorn has raised around $850 million since January 2021, including the $600 million it raised last year across multiple funding rounds. While it has already received $75 million, it is yet to receive the secondary raise, which can vary between $50-75 million.
With this, Pine Labs is valued at over $5 billion. But this is not enough, and it is eyeing a valuation between $6 billion to $7 billion in its $500 million IPO in the US. It had earlier filed for a confidential IPO with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for the same.
If it attains such valuation, it will become the third most privately valued fintech firm in the country behind Razorpay and PhonePe.
The pandemic has been a boon for fintechs across the world and the industry as a whole, and India’s startup ecosystem in 2021 set all kinds of records. With the increased need to go online for financial transactions, the fintech market in India reached $31 billion in size last year and is slated to grow at a CAGR of 22% in the next five years. And digital payments provider Pine Labs is but one of the startups to have enjoyed strong growth while riding the waves of accelerated digitization in recent times.
According to Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau, the funding came on account of Pine labs building an omnichannel strategy.
The company has been moving beyond its comfort zone and expanding into newer territories (which was seen with its acquisition of Singapore-based Fave). It also entered the online payments space with Plural, a payment gateway, for D2C brands to accept online and credit-linked payments.
It also acquired online payments startup Qfix Infocomm, to deepen its footprint in the online payments sector, provides a merchant platform, and makes software for Point of Sale (PoS) machines. Its offerings have diversified in recent times with its venture into the BNPL and consumer payment segments as well.
