A US-based hedge fund, Lone Pine Capital has funded an amount of $75-100 million in the digital payment company Pine Labs. Lone Pine Capital has earlier invested in major US startups like Uber. The company has a raise in the value of 33%, which is from 1.5$ to 2$. It has earlier raised funds from Mastercard. Pine Lab is the third valued fintech firm in India followed by Paytm and PhonePe. The latest fundraise from Lone Pine Capital includes the sale of a secondary share, which some of its early investors and employees have sold their holdings.
Pine Labs has doubled its ‘buy-now, pay-later’ opportunity for their retail customers. They also distribute point-of-sale (POS) machines so that they can increase digital payment. Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs said that the company is getting to the target of $3 billion based on the previous month’s transactions. The figure was $2 billion at the end of March. In August the company has deployed 13,500 terminals for storefronts and around 15,000 in September. Then it was 25,000 in October. The merchants who had literally no idea about digitization are now going ahead and saying about digital payment, he added. Mr. Rau joined the company in March after leaving PayU, the fintech unit of Prosus Ventures.
Pine Labs is in association with 120 brands and 35 credit issuers, which includes ICICI bank and Zest money. The firm’s 90% financing is in consumer purchases in the retail market, including large E-commerce platforms. It has a network of 1.5 lakh merchants in 3,700 cities across India and South Asia. Pine labs were profitable at an operational level and now it started gaining revenue at a rate of 50% year-on-year. Middle India needs to have the capital for the consumption of motorcycles, electronics, etc. Also, small businesses have the recognition that it’s very difficult to compete with large companies without digitization. So they expect to grow the current monthly terminal deployment of 25,000. They also need to grow internationally. Pine Labs showed its presence in Malaysia and is entering now entering the Middle East. With the help of association with Mastercard, they will be able to expand to another five countries.
