Pine Labs aims to take Indian fintech global even as it cuts valuation for IPO

Pine Labs, an Indian merchant-commerce startup backed by PayPal and Mastercard, is going nationalist this week astatine a valuation astir 40% little than its past backstage circular — adjacent arsenic it doubles down connected plans to instrumentality its fintech level global.

The Gurugram-based fintech has acceptable a terms set of ₹210–₹221 (about $2.00–$2.50) a share, valuing the institution astatine astir ₹254 cardinal (around $2.9 billion) astatine the precocious extremity of the range. This represents a diminution of astir 40% from its past private valuation of implicit $5 billion successful 2022.

Pine Labs has besides reduced its superior offering by 20% to ₹20.8 cardinal (approximately $234 million) from ₹26 cardinal successful its draught prospectus filed successful June, portion the connection for merchantability has been chopped by 44% to 82.3 cardinal shares from 148 cardinal shares planned earlier.

Existing investors, including Peak XV Partners, Temasek Holdings, PayPal, and Mastercard, are among those selling portion of their holdings successful the offering.

Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau told reporters astatine a property briefing connected Monday that investors had chosen to clasp a larger information of their shareholdings, which resulted successful a smaller connection for sale.

“When it came to the pricing of this IPO, we were precise wide that we privation to proceed to garner goodwill, and we wanted to get everybody’s enactment erstwhile we spell retired with this pricing for this IPO,” helium said. “We judge we were capable to support that because, astatine the extremity of the day, it takes a colony to travel unneurotic to make a palmy IPO.”

Founded successful 1998, Pine Labs initially focused connected deploying point-of-sale terminals for merchants but has since evolved beyond outgo acceptance to alteration measure payments done platforms specified arsenic Amazon Pay and CRED, and to facilitate account-aggregator-based transactions, among a broader suite of payment, transaction, and acquiring services.

Currently, astir 70% of Pine Labs’ gross comes from its integer infrastructure and transaction services, portion the remaining 30% is generated from its issuing and acquiring businesses, Rau said.

Pine Labs is among the fewer Indian startups that already service customers extracurricular the state and is seeking to grow its planetary beingness pursuing its planned listing connected Indian banal exchanges. This aligns with the Indian government’s broader push to physique globally competitory fintech offerings. The institution is besides portion of a increasing radical of exertion firms that person relocated their office to India to pat into the country’s ample basal of retail investors and to align much intimately with section regulatory frameworks.

The steadfast presently serves implicit 980,000 merchants, 716 user brands, and 177 fiscal institutions, powering much than six cardinal transactions cumulatively valued astatine implicit ₹11.4 trillion (around $128 billion). It already operates successful 20 countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Africa, the UAE, and the U.S.

Between the fiscal years 2023 and 2025, Pine Labs’ gross from planetary markets grew by astir 58%, Rau said.

“What we person done successful fintech successful India, nary different state has been capable to bash thing adjacent to that,” helium told reporters. “We person the accidental to instrumentality this IP knowledge, the exertion stack that we person developed, and marque it global. We person been the archetypal companies which has really done that, and we judge that our fintech stack is very, precise overmuch successful request successful planetary markets, and that’s wherefore we are winning these clients successful these planetary markets.”

In India, Pine Labs competes with the likes of Razorpay, Paytm, and Walmart-owned PhonePe. The institution turned profitable successful the June quarter, posting a nett net of ₹47.86 cardinal (about $540,000), compared with a nonaccomplishment of ₹278.89 cardinal a twelvemonth earlier. Revenue from operations roseate 17.9% year-over-year to ₹6.16 cardinal (around $69 million) successful the quarter. The firm’s overseas concern contributed astir 15% of full revenue, amounting to ₹943.25 cardinal (roughly $11 million), up from ₹795.97 cardinal a twelvemonth earlier.

Pine Labs’ listing comes amid a question of Indian exertion companies preparing to spell public, including Groww, Lenskart, Shadowfax, Meesho, and BoAt, each of which are expected to motorboat their offerings this year.