Actis leads $82m round for India's Pine Labs
Emerging markets-focused private equity firm Actis has led an $82 million funding round for Indian financial technology company Pine Labs.
Altimeter Capital, a technology-focused private equity firm based in the US, also participated. Previous investors include Sequoia Capital India and Madison India Capital. The fresh capital will be applied to domestic and international expansion effort including Malaysia and the Middle East.
“Pine Labs is a special investment for Sequoia India, because it is a story of incredible grit, first-principles innovation and company building by [Pine Labs CEO Lokvir Kapoor] and the management team that spans more than a decade,” Shailendra Singh, managing director at Sequoia Capital (India) Singapore, said in a statement. “Pine Labs has emerged into a category-defining company.”
Founded in 1998, Pine Labs claims to be the leading digital retail payment platform in India, handling about 15% of the country’s cashless transactions in physical retail stores. The company replaces card-dependent point-of-sale terminals with a cloud-connected platform that is designed to reduce costs and drive revenue for retailers. It aims to increase its deployment of terminals more than threefold within five years to 1 million units.
Pine Labs is touted as supporting all payment types, including bank-issued credit cards, e-wallets, electronic gift cards, QR codes and other services based on unified payments interface technology. The company’s platform is also said to enable clients to create and deploy new products related to targeted customer engagement campaigns, consumer analytics and in-store customer financing services.
Actis was established in 2004 by spinning out from UK governmental financial institution CDC Group. The firm has invested in payments businesses in more than 50 countries. Last year, it committed MYR290 million ($74.5 million) to Malaysian point-of-sale services company GHL Group, facilitating an exit and 2.8x return for Creador.
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