[Funding alert] Fintech unicorn Pine Labs raises $50M from PE major Vitruvian Partners at $5B valuation

IPO-bound Singapore and Noida-based merchant commerce platform Pine Labs announced it has raised $50 million from Vitruvian Partners, a London-headquartered international investment firm. Media reports claim that this round takes the valuation of the startup to slightly over $5 billion. The funding round also includes a $15 million ESOP buyback before its planned IPO in the US.

B Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, said,

“At Pine Labs, we are deeply focussed on the omnichannel play and are building frictionless and seamless payment experiences for our merchant partners and large enterprises. We aim to further strengthen our recent foray in online payments via Plural and take our Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) offering to new markets through strategic collaborations.”

Pine Labs is expanding its BNPL offering in Southeast Asia. 

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[Funding alert] Pine Labs raises $150M from Alpha Wave Venture

Last month, the fintech unicorn closed a $150 million financing from Alpha Wave Global (previously Falcon Edge), which also included a secondary share sale, at a valuation of $5 billion.

Earlier this month, it had launched a ‘Mastercard Installments with Pine Labs’ programme with Mastercard and DBS Bank to empower the bank’s two million customers in Singapore, Indonesia, and Hong Kong SAR with Pay Later instalment purchase options at the point of sale. 

“Our investment in Pine Labs follows several investments we have made into the digital payments space, and we’re excited to partner with the management team as they continue to drive digital transformation within the rapidly growing Indian payments market. We were impressed by the versatility of the omnichannel payments platform, as well as the expanding geographic footprint,” said Peter Read, Partner at Vitruvian Partners.

Vitruvian Partners had participated in edtech major BYJU'S $800 million funding earlier this month.

A merchant commerce platform, Pine Labs, founded in 1998 by Lokvir Kapoor, serves large, mid-sized and small merchants across India and Southeast Asia.

Its cloud-based software platform enables it to offer a wide range of payment acceptance and merchant commerce solutions including enterprise automation systems such as inventory management and customer relationship management. The stored value platform includes issuing, processing, and distributing digital gift cards for corporate customers around the world.

The company powers over 150,000 merchants, 3.5 lakh points of sales (PoS) terminals across 3,700 cities in India and Malaysia.

According to Crunchbase, PineLabs has raised over a billion dollars to date. It counts State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, IIFL Asset Management, Invesco, Unacademy’s Gaurav Munjal, Swiggy’s Sriharsha Majety and Dream11’s Harsh Jain as its investors.

In January 2022, it raised 20 million from the State Bank of India. 

The company filed for a confidential IPO in the US in January this year. It would reportedly raise about $500 million from the public market, at a valuation of $6-7 billion.