Pine Labs, which was valued at $2 billion in December 2020, has begun early-stage discussions with at least four merchant bankers to work on the IPO. It is said to be aiming at a valuation of around $5 billion. The valuation could change based on how the discussions progress.
This makes Pine Labs the latest prominent Indian startup looking to go public. Multiple Indian startups including Delhivery, PolicyBazaar, Zomato, and Nykaa are eyeing an IPOs in 12-18 months.
“Pine Labs has sounded out bankers like JP Morgan, Citibank, and Morgan Stanley to start working on the IPO plans. Besides India, it is betting on its Southeast Asia expansion to double down on its growth momentum,” a person aware of the matter said. When contacted, Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau declined to comment on the matter.
Pine Labs, based out of India and Singapore, has been one of the beneficiaries of the pandemic-induced acceleration in digital payments in India. “Pine Labs is expanding its buy-now-pay-later product aggressively and currently covers 90% of the financing for consumer purchases in the retail market, excluding large e-commerce platforms like Flipkart and Amazon India,” one of the persons said.
It also recently launched a new payment app that enables merchants to accept payments through a near field communication, or NFC-enabled smartphone via debit and credit cards without swiping the cards on the point-of-sale (PoS) machines. This is being done to widen its reach among small merchants, entrepreneurs and other small businesses who want to accept digital payments without having to install a PoS machine.
Pine Labs works with around 120 brands and 35 credit issuers, including ICICI Bank and Zest Money. It has a network of 150,000 merchants in 3,700 cities across India and south Asia. It counts card network major Mastercard, US-based hedge fund Lone Pine Capital and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital among its investors.
