Pine Labs, an India-based digital payments platform, announced on Thursday Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore, and PayPal Holdings Inc., have acquired minority stakes in the company for a combined $125 million. The latest investment comes just a couple of months after Pine Labs secured $82 million.
As previously reported, Pine Labs, which was founded in 1998, stated it began its journey with specialty payment & loyalty solutions for closed-user group applications for the retail petroleum industry. The company revealed it has evolved into a payments platform that connects more than 75,000 retailers in over 1,600 cities throughout India. Speaking about the latest investment, Lokvir Kapoor, Founder of Pine Labs, stated:
“We’re teaming up with Temasek and PayPal at a time when the Indian payments market is at an inflexion point. We are a leader in the offline payments space, a position that is critical in enabling the ecosystem of online payment products. The investments will help us move a step closer to our vision for building a world-class merchant-centric payments ecosystem.”
Vicky Bindra, CEO of Pine Labs, also commented:
“We believe it is possible to achieve India’s cashless vision by digitizing the payments acceptance infrastructure. We are furthest ahead in this journey in India with an annualized GTV of $15 billion USD on a base of approximately 300,000 payments acceptance points. This positions us as a critical and strategically important player in the offline-online convergence in India. Pine is also on track to originate over $1 billion USD of instant loans at point-of-sale terminals for card issuers and partner NBFCs this fiscal year, demonstrating the power and utility of our payments platform. The investments from Temasek and PayPal will help accelerate Pine’s growth.”
Pine Labs reported that Sequoia India, which first invested in the company in 2009, remains the company’s largest shareholder. Shailendra Singh, Managing Director of Sequoia Capital (India) Singapore, added:
“We are thrilled to welcome Temasek and PayPal to the company. In the last year, Pine Labs has added four valuable equity partners, including Actis and Altimeter, who have significant expertise in the global payments industry. This is a huge endorsement of the team’s accomplishments and provides the company a significant strategic advantage. We value our long-term partnership with Pine Lab’s leadership team, and are excited about the next phase of growth and evolution.”