Pine Labs Files for Rs 2,600 Crore IPO...
27 Jun, 2025
Indian fintech unicorn Pine Labs has reportedly made an official filing of its Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), indicating its plans to raise Rs 2,600 crore (approximately $304 million) via a fresh issue of shares. The relocation is a major milestone to the public listing of Pine Labs in the Indian stock markets, and the IPO is likely to be among the largest fintech offerings in the recent past.
In addition to the new issue, current investors like the world giants PayPal, Mastercard, Peak XV Partners, and Macritchie Investments will sell up to 14.78 crore shares (147.8 million shares) through an Offer for Sale (OFS). This secondary offering by early investors is expected to give liquidity to the investors who have invested in Pine Labs at its initial stages of growth.
It is also considering a pre-IPO issue of shares of up to Rs 520 crore pending regulatory and board approvals. The IPO is being handled by a group of top-notch investment banks including Axis Capital, Morgan Stanley, Citi, J.P. Morgan, and Jefferies which means that the offering will have strong institutional support.
The proceeds of the fresh issue will be mostly utilized to repay debt and invest in Pine Labs subsidiaries, such as Qwikcilver Singapore, Pine Payment Solutions Malaysia, and Pine Labs UAE according to the DRHP. It has provisioned around Rs 870 crore to repay the debt of the company and its subsidiaries, Synergistic and Cashless Technologies. Also, the money will be spent on cloud infrastructure upgrade, the purchase of digital checkout solutions, IT assets enhancement, and corporate purposes.
The IPO listing is a strategic shift for Pine Labs. Plans were earlier to include a much bigger $1 billion (Rs 8,300 crore) IPO, possibly abroad. Nevertheless, the company has now decided to have a more humble domestic listing. Pine Labs was most recently valued at 5 billion dollars in its 2022 funding round and has just been granted permission to change its corporate domicile in Singapore to India to make this listing in the Indian market.
The target valuation of Pine Labs at the time of listing is between Rs 50,000 crore and Rs 70,000 crore ($6 billion to $8 billion), which shows the ambition of the company and its expansion in the fintech space.
Pine Labs was established in 1998 and has become a leading fintech company dealing with point-of-sale (PoS) terminals and merchant-centric payment solutions. Although its main business is offline payments using PoS terminals, Pine Labs has expanded into online payments using its platform Fave, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services, invoice management, and gifting solutions, as it seeks to expand its sources of revenue.
With Amrish Rau as its CEO, the company recorded revenues of 200.4 million in fiscal year 2024, compared to 189.7 million in FY23, but its losses increased to 40.7 million as compared to 27.2 million. The international business of Pine Labs is expanding fast, with new markets in Singapore, Malaysia, and the UAE, making the company grow at 50 percent per year beyond India.
The Indian IPO market has recorded a sluggish beginning to 2025 in terms of proceeds and offerings compared to last year. Nonetheless, foreign investors are slowly coming back due to big block trades and the rising market sentiment. The reference Nifty index has increased by 8 percent this year, which has been a sign of renewed optimism in the Indian equity markets.
The IPO of Pine Labs will become an important part of the improving IPO environment, which could reignite interest in fintech and technology listings among investors. The involvement of marquee investors and the high growth profile of the company make it more attractive.
A number of major shareholders are taking part in the OFS. Peak XV Partners is supposed to be the biggest seller and sell up to 39 million shares and decreasing its share by approximately 3.6%. Other key sellers are Actis, Macritchie Investments, a Temasek unit, PayPal (which plans to sell its 6 percent holding by about 1 percent), Invesco and members of the Pine Labs management team, including Lokvir Kapoor, a co-founder, and Amrish Rau, the chief executive.
The IPO listing of Pine Labs will be a major achievement in the Indian fintech ecosystem and will provide investors with an opportunity to be a part of the success story of one of the most popular payments platforms. The company has a clear plan on how to use proceeds to reduce debt and make strategic investments and with the strong institutional backing, the company is in a good position to take advantage of the growing market of digital payments both locally and internationally.
The IPO is expected to open in the coming months, with market watchers keenly observing its pricing and subscription trends as a barometer for fintech investor appetite in India
