Pine Labs raises fresh funds from PayPal & Temasek.
Singapore investment firm Temasek and global payment giant PayPal have led an investment of $125 million (Rs 843 crore) in the payment startup Pine Labs. The funding has propelled the Noida based startup to unicorn status, making it one of the rare Indian Fintech startups to cross the $1 billion valuation.
The new funds will help Pine Labs in expanding its footprints across the country and also to develop its product portfolio further, a statement issued by the company said. Furthermore, reports claim that the Fintech startup plans to take leverage of Temasek’s vast network for scaling up its operation in Southeast Asian market and make full use of Paypal’s technological capabilities.
Prior to this round, Pine Labs raised $82 Mn from private equity firm Actis Capital barely two months back. The investment had then propelled company’s valuation to nearly $900 million.
Founded way back in 1998, the Noida headquartered startup has steadily grown to emerge as one of the most successful fintech startups in India. It has developed a native cloud system that allows merchants to seamlessly accept payment through traditional payment methods like debit & credit cards on a single platform. The company also uses cloud platform to offer many of its other products like electronic gift cards, consumer analytics and in-store consumer financing.
The startup’s success is reflected through its numbers, with the management claiming that it processes roughly 450 million transactions every year and constitutes roughly 15% of the digital payment witnessed in the physical retail stores.
Pine Lab’s earliest investor Sequoia India is still company’s largest investor. Last year, a report in Economic Times claimed that the venture capital firm was serious planning to make an exit through stake sale. However, Sequoia so far has still managed to make an exit.