[Funding alert] Pine Labs raises $100M from Invesco Developing Markets Fund

Fintech startup Pine Labs said on Thursday it raised $100 million in funding from US-based investment management company, Invesco Developing Markets Fund.

The latest funding comes months after the startup raised $600 million from marquee investors, including Fidelity Management & Research Company, BlackRock Inc, a fund advised by Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers LLC, Ishana, Tree Line, IIFL AMC via its ‘Late-Stage Tech Fund’, and Kotak.

"Over the last 18 months, we have scaled our Prepaid Issuing stack, Online Payments, and also the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) offering. We continue to make progress in the larger Asian markets with our BNPL platform," said B. Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, in a press statement.

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The merchant commerce platform is shoring up capital and raising more from investors with an initial public offering (IPO) in its line of sight. It has appointed Wall Street banks, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, as advisors for its US IPO next year, Economic Times reported.

The IPO could value Pine Labs at $6 billion, nearly double the $3.5 billion price tag it attracted in July when it raised $600 million, the report added.

"The Invesco Developing Markets Fund is pleased to invest in Pine Labs, a leading fintech services company in India, which fits our strategy of seeking high-quality companies that have durable long-term growth potential," Justin Leverenz, CIO of Developing Markets Equities at Invesco, said in the press release.

The Indian fintech space is seeing some interesting consolidation over the last year. Behemoths such as Paytm and MobiKwik have already begun the process of listing on the capital markets, and it is widely expected that more could join the line.

In August, Naspers-owned Prosus bought digital payments processor BillDesk for $4.7 billion to bolster its PayU business.

Pine Labs — which provides a range of financial services — including point-of-sale devices, merchant commerce, and financing, in April, acquired pay-and-save app Fave for $45 million. The app has over six million users and more than 40,000 merchants.