Report: India’s Pine Labs is Weighing IPO

Digital Payments

The chief executive of Pine Labs, an Indian FinTech firm, says the company may go public in as little as a year because of opportunities in digital payments, Reuters reported.

“We are at a stage where we will want to look at an IPO option in the next 12 months’ time,” Amrish Rau told Reuters in a virtual interview, the news service reported. “In the next 18 months’ time, I see this (online business) to be a $25 billion opportunity (annually) just for Pine Labs. We have an opportunity where we can potentially double our volumes in the next two-and-a-half years’ time.”

According to Reuters, Rau declined to specify the exchange on which the company was likely to list. The company is valued at about $3.5 billion and is backed by investors including Sequoia Capital, PayPal, Mastercard and Singapore’s Temasek.

Pine Labs, which generates revenue of up to $35 billion annually, serves the hospitality, telecom and electronics sectors, among others. In its marketing materials, Pine Labs lists clients including Burger King, McDonald’s, Flipkart, Starbucks and Marks & Spencer. After its founding in 1998, the company spent its first 10 years focused on smart-card systems for payments and loyalty programs, its website states. “Eleven years later, we made our first forays into the world of mainstream payments, giving merchants solutions and connecting them with banks and financial services,” the company said.

On Thursday (Oct. 14), Pine Labs launched its Plural offering, which the company called its “foray into the online payments space.” Plural has three components, including a customizable payments gateway that includes buy now, pay later (BNPL) capabilities; a payments gateway tailored to improve transactions on the Android and iOS mobile operating systems; and a console that allows payments on multiple platforms through one technology framework.