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The payment was an area marred with currencies, chaos, and uncertainties. This ushered in the ATM facilities and the ATM-cum debit cards for banking customers. However, even after ATMs came into being in India, the effective usage of cards in the physical shops and for other merchants was still fraught with numerous concerns. To mitigate these, Pine Labs was established.
Founded in 1998 as a simple card-based payment and loyalty program, Pine Labs now stands as an Indian merchant platform company to extend financing and last-mile retail transaction technology for the merchants and their customers.
However, it was in 2009 that Pine labs' real payments journey began when it ventured into the mainstream payments space and decided to provide solutions to the merchants by connecting to banks and other financial services with the all-new Pine Labs PoS machines. The company was acutely aware that merchants were seeking solutions to enhance their engagement with customers during the payment process. So, it began partnering with banks and payment aggregators and ensured their PoS machine could process all forms of digital payments.
Pine Labs currently provides merchant platform supports and makes software for point of sale (PoS) machines. The company currently boasts of having more than 70,000 retailers in India including biggies like Mark's and Spencer's Retail, Pantaloons, Westside, and more. It is also a unicorn, which joined the coveted club of Indian unicorns in the month of January in 2020 by raising an undisclosed amount from the American multinational company, Mastercard, thus becoming the first Indian unicorn startup in 2020 to emerge as a unicorn.
StartupTalky covers the full journey that Pine Labs witnessed including all the information about the company, its Founders and Team, Name, Tagline and Logo, Mission and Vision, Business and Revenue Model, Challenges, Startup Story, Competitors, Funding and Investors, and more.
Pine Labs - Company Highlights
| Startup Name | Pine Labs Pvt. Ltd. |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Noida, India |
| Industry | Fintech |
| Founded | 1998 |
| Founders | Lokvir Kapoor, Rajul Garg, Tarun Upadhyay |
| CEO | Amrish Rau |
| Total Funding | $1.2 bn (April 2022) |
| Valuation | $5 bn+ (February 2022) |
| Revenue | $94.14 mn (Rs 701.62 crore in FY20) |
| Website | www.pinelabs.com |
Pine Labs - About and How it Works?
Pine Labs - Name, Tagline, Logo and its Meaning
Pine Labs - Startup Story
Pine Labs - Founders and Team
Pine Labs - Mission and Vision
Pine Labs - Products and Services
Pine Labs - Business and Revenue Model
Pine Labs - Revenue and Growth
Pine Labs - Funding and Investors
Pine Labs - Acquisitions
Pine Labs - Partnerships
Pine Labs - Awards and Achievements
Pine Labs - Competitors
Pine Labs - Challenges Faced
Pine Labs - Future Plans
Pine Labs - About and How it Works?
Pine Labs is an Indian merchant platform company that provides financing and last-mile retail transaction technology founded in 1998.
Every day merchants use Pine Labs PoS machines to increase revenue whilst reducing costs, complexity, and risks. This gives Pine Labs a unique opportunity to participate in their growth journey. It focuses on the merchants’ needs, revenue generation strategies, last-mile retail transaction technologies, data analysis, and experiences for their shoppers and customers. The company offers a full-stack merchant platform that is a unique blend of technology and financial solutions.
Pine Labs' solutions, which are used by merchants from diverse sectors, are now used by over 100,000 merchants in India, and several other Asian countries. In India alone, the company’s cloud-based platform powers over 350,000 PoS in over 3,700 towns.
Pine Labs - Name, Tagline, Logo and its Meaning
Pine Labs is driven by the tagline "We make your business future-positive."
The logo has a bright green double arrow symbol pointed Northeast and denotes growth, prosperity and optimism.
Pine Labs - Startup Story
In the beginning, the company's focus was clearly on large-scale, smart, card-based payment and loyalty solutions for the retail petroleum industry. It was in 2009 that the real payments journey of the company began when it ventured into the mainstream payments space to provide solutions with their PoS machines to merchants, connecting them to banks and other financial services. The company partnered with banks and payment aggregators and ensured their PoS machines could process all forms of digital payments.
By 2012, Pine Labs had redefined their payment technology offerings and grown into a company that pioneered the smart, cloud-based unified point-of-sale platform, designed to reduce costs and drive revenues for retailers. Their alliances with top banks and brands gave them the ability to offer multiple services to the merchant through their platform.
Thus, it evolved into a merchant platform that encompasses solutions around payments, risk assessment, multi-channel analytics, merchant lending and insurance, brand offers, cashback, integrated billing, and more. It currently boasts of a network of over 21 financial services institutions and 100 brands.
The year 2017 saw Pine Labs lay its first global footprint when it entered Malaysia with an exclusive partnership with CIMB Bank. And today, Pine Labs is well into building the world’s most robust merchant platform that brings together technology and financial solutions to meet every need of the modern merchant.
Rishabh Rathi
Pine Labs - Founders and Team
The founders of Pine Labs are Lokvir Kapoor, Rajul Garg, and Tarun Upadhyay.
Lokvir Kapoor
Lokvir Kapoor is recognized as the Executive Chairman and Co-founder of Pine Labs. Kapoor is an IIT Kanpur alumnus from where he obtained a BTech in Mechanical Engineering. He eventually went to complete an MBA from IIM Bangalore. Lokvir previously worked with Schlumberger in the areas of financial management and business development in India and abroad before he co-founded Pine Labs in 1998.
Rajul Garg
Currently known as the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Leo Capital Holdings, Rajul Garg has been the Co-founder of Pine Labs and also served as the CEO of the company for over 5 years post which he remained as the Board member for more than 4 years. Leaving the company Rajul co-founded GlobalLogic where he served as the Co-founder and COO and SVP. Garg then became a Consultant and Angel Investor for a considerable amount of time. Sunstone Eduversity was another company that Rajul co-founded. He was also the CEO of the company. Rajul Garg has a Btech in Computer Science from IIT Delhi.
Tarun Upadhyay
Tarun Upadhyay was a Co-founder and CTO at Pine Labs. Upadhyay has an integrated Msc. in Mathematics and Computer Applications from IIT Delhi. Tarun has a streak of co-founding companies including GlobalLogic, hCentive, and Gallop.ai in most of which he served as the co-founder and CTO except in Gallop.ai, where Tarun was appointed as the CEO.
Amrish Rau is currently the CEO of Pine Labs. He assumed his office with the Noida-based fintech unicorn in March 2020. He has previous experiences of being a CEO in First Data and Payu India.
Pine Labs has a company size of 1001-5000 employees.
Pine Labs - Mission and Vision
Pine Labs' mission statement says, "Maniacal focus on creating a product and services platform that widens access and accelerates commerce for merchants in each local market we operate in."
"We believe that every business can grow exponentially with technology and capital" goes the vision statement of Pine labs.
Pine Labs - Products and Services
The company provides mobile point of sale (PoS) machines that allow merchants to accept credit and debit card payments. Some offerings of Pine Labs include Instant EMI, Instant Discounts, Cashback Programs, PaybyPoints, Loyalty Solutions, e-Wallet, Targeted Promotions, Dynamic Currency Conversion, and Gift Solution.
Pine Labs announced the launch of the merchant commerce platform Plural on October 14, 2021, with which the company forayed into the payment gateway business. This sets Pine Labs as a direct competitor against companies like Razorpay, PayU-Billdesk, CCAvenue, and Paytm. Plural Gateway, Plural Checkout, and Plural Console are the 3 products that the company launched with an aim to serve its merchant base of over 5 lakhs. These products can be defined as:
- Plural Gateway - Plural Gateway will help the merchants avail of a single payment dashboard for different kinds of payments, including Unified Payments Interface (UPI), credit and debit cards.
- Plural Checkout - Plural Checkout serves as a Mobile SDK (Software Development Kit), which aims to boost the performance of the payment gateways for Android and iOS users.
- Plural Console - Designed as a Payment Orchestration Platform (POP), Plural Console will offer a single tech framework to trigger transactions via multiple payment gateways, as mentioned by the company in a press statement.
Pine Labs - Business and Revenue Model
After two decades of working closely with merchants, Pine Labs now help merchants sell more, grow more, and build more with greater efficiency. It serves the merchants’ omnichannel needs. By leveraging technology and domain expertise, it caters to merchants of all sizes helping them to thrive in the changing global marketplace.
The Pine Labs business model is altered as per its merchants' needs. The payments unicorn introduced advanced, cloud-based point-of-sale (PoS) machines that enhanced their engagement with customers during the payment process. Pine Labs has restructured the payment technology space whilst contributing hand in hand to the world's digital economy as well. It is also credited as one of the oldest fintech companies in India.
Pine labs depend heavily on the sale of their products, like the POS payments devices. Furthermore, it also gains commissions from the sale of its services. The company through the income it gets from the interest on fixed deposits and current investments.
Pine Labs - Revenue and Growth
Pine Labs has a network of over 150K merchants across 3700+ cities in India and Malaysia.
Transactions on Pine Labs machine can be initiated by cards, QR codes, or phone number billing. The company also offers working capital loans, loyalty services via PinePerks, etc.
Some of its partners include Apple, Google Pay, Samsung, Sony, etc. The company has raised $310.8 Million from investors such as Sequoia India, PayPal, Temasek, Actis Capital, Altimeter Capital, Madison India Capital, and Sofina.
In terms of financial performance, after the pivot in 2014, the company had first posted profits in FY17. However, with the increasing costs of growth in terms of expenses, it couldn’t maintain profitability and Pine Labs slipped to losses for FY18 and FY19.
Nevertheless, when we look at net loss figures, the losses of Pine Labs have jumped 4.46X, but excluding tax, the company’s losses had decreased marginally from INR 18.3 Cr in FY18 to INR 15.22 Cr in FY19. The impact could be seen of deferred taxes.
Pine Labs raised Rs 285 crores in the month of June, which included fresh issuance of shares and secondary sales that saw Baron Capital, Duro Capital, Marshall Wace, Moore Strategic Ventures, Ward Ferry Management as investors.
Furthermore, the company has also announced an upcoming second leg of the same fundraising round. This round is completed by Pine Labs on July 6, 2021, which saw the company mopping up a whopping $600 million, courtesy of Blackrock and Fidelity. The total valuation of the company has shot up to $3 billion due to the latest fundraising rounds. The company is currently valued at around $3.5 bn, as of January 4, 2022.
Here are some of the growth statistics of the company at a glance:
- It is one of the oldest fintech companies in India
- It boasts of having around 140,000 merchants in India and other Asian countries
- Pine Labs platform powers over 350,000 PoS terminals in India across 3,700 cities and towns in India and Malaysia
- It has more than 70,000 retailers across India
- Pine Labs has partnerships with more than 15 major banks, 7 financial institutions and more than 100 brands are a part of Pine Lab’s platform that processes payments of around $30 Bn each year
Avantika Bhardwaj
Pine Labs - Funding and Investors
Pine Labs has seen 13 rounds of funding in total and is currently valued at over $5 Billion in April 2022. The last round of Pine Labs funding was worth $50 mn, led by Vitruvian Partners, which it received on March 29, 2022. The previous round was of $150 mn, which was led by Alpha Wave Global on February 18, 2022.
The fintech giant raised 3 rounds in the past year including the $100 mn round from Invesco and the massive July 6, 2021 round led by Fidelity, BlackRock, and others when it raised $600M. It has also raised $20 mn from the country's largest commercial bank, SBI.
Pine Labs turned into a unicorn company on January 25, 2020, thereby becoming India's first unicorn in 2020 after it received an undisclosed amount from Mastercard in the month of January the same year.
| Date | Round | Amount | Lead Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 29, 2022 | Private Equity Round | $50M | Vitruvian Partners |
| February 18, 2022 | Secondary Round | $150M | Alpha Wava Global |
| January 4, 2022 | Corporate Round | $20M | SBI |
| September 16, 2021 | Venture Round | $100M | Invesco Developing Markets Fund |
| July 6, 2021 | - | $600M | Fidelity Management & Research Co. and BlackRock Inc. and others |
| May 17, 2021 | Venture Round | $285M | Baron Capital Group, Duro Capital, Marshall Wace, Moore Strategic Ventures and Ward Ferry Management and other existing investors |
| December 21, 2020 | Secondary Market | - | Lone Pine Capital |
| Jan 24, 2020 | Corporate Round | - | Mastercard |
| May 31, 2018 | Secondary Market | $125M | PayPal Ventures, Temasek Holdings |
| Mar 13, 2018 | Private Equity Round | $22M | Actis |
| Jul 29, 2017 | Corporate Round | $99M | Flipkart |
| Apr 20, 2017 | Secondary Market | - | Madison India Capital |
| Mar 25, 2009 | Seed Round | $1M | Sequoia Capital India |
Pine Labs has already passed a resolution according to the regulatory filings, where it has decided to convert its Singapore-based holding entity from private to public. The company has been renamed Pine Labs Limited from Pine labs Pte to start preparing for its upcoming IPO. Pine Labs is eyeing its US listing within the next 10-12 months. The company is estimated to raise its valuation to $5 billion in the potential IPO ahead. The IPO of Pine Labs is estimated to be around $1 bn in 2022.
The new reports dated January 10, 2022 state that Pine Labs' preparation for its upcoming US listing is on, where the company will be raising about $500 mn (down from the $1 bn reported previously) at a valuation of $5-7 bn. The plans of the Pine Labs IPO are still on in February 2022, where the company is planning to list in the US exchange at a valuation of $6-7 billion in the IPO.
ESOPs
Pine Labs has officially announced its ESOP buyback plan worth Rs 100 cr. Amrish Rau, the CEO, and Co-founder of the company took to Twitter to express his happiness. Here goes his Twitter post:
Great to have Vitruvian Partners invest in Pine Labs. We continue to build for the long term.
— Amrish Rau (@amrishrau) March 30, 2022
Really happy that we did a 100 crores ESOP buy back. We have a great team here, and we have much to do! https://t.co/7q1juPBfkP
Pine Labs - Acquisitions
Pine Labs has acquired 3 companies to date. The last Pine Labs acquisition was reported when the company acquired Mumbai-based online payments startup, Qfix Infocomm on February 8, 2022. The latest acquisition will help its parent with the recently launched Plural platform.
The company is currently in talks with Setu, a fintech infrastructure company that is backed by Lightspeed for an upcoming acquisition.
Pine Labs has acquired gift solution provider, QwikCilver Solutions on Mar 19, 2019, for $110 million. The Fintech platform from Southeast Asia, Fave was acquired by Pine Labs in a deal worth $45 million on April 13, 2021.
| Name of the Acquired Company | Acquired Date | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Qfix Infocomm | February 8, 2022 | - |
| Fave | April 13, 2021 | $45 mn |
| QwikCilver Solutions | March 19, 2019 | $110 mn |
Pine Labs - Partnerships
Out of several partnerships, here is a list of some of the prominent partnerships of Pine Labs throughout the years:
- Pine Labs collaborated with Kotak Mahindra bank to scale up its merchant acquiring and point of sale systems
- The fintech company collaborated with OneCard in September 13, 2021, to enable the EMI options at POS for their customers
- Pine Labs announced its partnership on July 22, 2020, with Fave with an aim to expand cashless payment solutions to offline SMEs and enterprises to accelerate digitization
- Pine Labs entered the Malaysian market with an exclusive partnership with CIMB Bank in 2017, which asserted their first global footprint
Pine Labs - Competitors
Pine Labs Top Competitors are:
- PayPal
- PayKun
- Stripe Connect
- Payoneer
- Apple Pay
- GoCardless
- Authorize.Net
- Thryv
- BlueSnap
Pine Labs - Awards and Achievements
Pine Labs won a list of awards in all these years it has been active:
- It won the India Fintech Forum’s IFTA 2021 Award for the “Most Innovative Fintech Product” in November 2021
- The AllTap #WarriorsAtWork campaign of Pine Labs obtained the award for ‘Best Fintech Marketing Campaign’ at CMO Asia, 2021
- Pine Labs was announced the winner of the ‘Best Digital API’ award in the category of Best Technology Solutions at the 11th India Digital Awards conducted by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)
- Pine Labs won a payment and fintech award in the category of Best Payment Technology/Solution provider at the 10th India Digital Awards in February 2020. This award was awarded to Pine Labs for enabling the EMI feature on its Android PoS
- Sanjeev Kumar, Chief Technology Officer, Pine Labs, won the Change Agents 2019 award in December 2019 at CIO500 Conclave & Awards 2019, conducted by Enterprise IT World
- Pine Labs won the 2019 Indian Merchant Platform Customer Value Leadership Award at the Frost & Sullivan - 2019 India Best Practices Awards in October 2019
Pine Labs - Challenges Faced
India’s digital payments growth story has grabbed several eyeballs from international agencies as well as tech giants. From revolutionizing the use of QR codes to Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to enabling point-of-sale via mobile-like devices etc, the innovation in the Indian digital payments industry has awed the world.
While most of these innovative and disruptive ideas haven’t reaped profits, but point-of-sale (PoS) player Pine Labs did in 2017. This, however, is not the case anymore. Being one of the few Indian startups generating profits in FY17, the company spiraled into losses back in FY18. Continuing the trend in FY19 results, Pine Labs reported a net loss of INR 13.5 Cr for the year, as against INR 2.5 Cr net loss in FY18. Though Pine labs swung back to profits and happen to be one of the few companies in FY17 that brought in profits, the company again turned into a loss-making company when last recorded in 2021.
Shubham Kumar
Pine Labs - Future Plans
Digital retail payments platform Pine Labs is gearing up for the next phase of its journey. It is planning to bring in the latest solutions that aim at proving a better customer experience, foray into new markets and categories, and eventually go for an initial public offering (IPO) in the next 18 months. The public listing of the company is estimated to be worth around $1 bn. Furthermore, the company is also eyeing its NASDAQ stock market listing this year, as of January 2022's reports. The company has already hired Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as advisors ahead of its listing.
In the next couple of years, the Noida-based firm is also expecting the total payment volume (TPV) on its transactions to rise more than four-fold to $100 billion from $23 billion.
That would put Pine Labs in the league of US-based financial and merchant services firm Square Inc, whose gross payment volume in the most recent fiscal period amounted to $84.65 billion, up from 65.35 billion in 2017, according to data platform Statista.
“I think for the last 18 months, we are taking the journey of becoming a platform company,” said Bindra, who before joining Pine Labs in 2015 led Visa’s global product and solutions group in San Francisco.
In the next phase, Pine Labs is getting into providing loans to merchants in partnerships with banks as well as NBFCs and package other services such as insurance with it. It will also provide goods and services tax (GST) payments on behalf of these merchants.
FAQs
What is Pine Labs?
Pine Labs is an Indian merchant platform company that provides financing and last-mile retail transaction technology.
What is hardware ID in Pine Labs?
The Hardware ID is a unique identification number for your machine. To activate your license, you will need to provide this number.
How does Pine Labs make money?
Pine Labs earns its revenue by the sale and leasing of its devices, via the services it offers, and through the interest that it receives on fixed deposits and current investments.
How does Pine Labs work?
Pine Labs is an Indian merchant platform company that provides financing and last-mile retail transaction technology, founded in 1998. The company has more than 70,000 retailers across India, including major retail outlets such as Mark's and Spencer's Retail, Pantaloons, Shoppers Stop, and Westside.
Source :- https://startuptalky.com/ Author :- Anik Banerjee Date :-April 09, 2022 at 12:14PM