IPO-bound PineLabs just added a million merchants to its kitty with its latest acquisition

• PineLabs on Wednesday announced an investment in Mosambee.
• This investment will now value Mosambee at upwards of $100 million.
• Mosambee has a base of 1 million SME merchants and various government departments.

Initial public offering (IPO)-bound fintech startup PineLabs on Wednesday announced an investment in Mosambee — an end-to-end payment solution provider in India — in exchange for a majority stake.

This investment will now value Mosambee at upwards of $100 million, PineLabs has revealed. The leadership team at Mosambee will continue to operate independently and serve the needs of their customers spread across diverse industries.

Founded in 2008 by Alok Arora, Bhushan Thaker and Sameer Chugh, Mosambee is a payment solution company that caters to both online and offline merchants in India and six other countries.

The company claims to have a base of 1 million small, medium enterprises (SME) merchants and various government departments, who use Mosambee’s solutions to digitise their payment collections. “With the extensive reach of Pine Labs and their portfolio companies, we aim to continue to deliver strong profitability and breakthrough solutions to our clients,” Mosambee’s cofounder Chugh said.

According to business intelligence platform Crunchbase, Mosambee has raised over $2.5 million prior to this. It is backed by Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) Venture Capital and Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund. Earlier this year, Mosambee announced the acquisition of Cashless Technologies that runs Benow, a ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ startup.

“Ever since its founding, Mosambee has made tremendous progress in elevating the merchant experience through cutting-edge fintech solutions. They were a natural fit for us due to our shared purpose of making innovative fintech products accessible to all and driving forward the digital payment revolution in India,” Amrish Rau, the chief executive officer (CEO) of PineLabs, said in a statement.

Founded in 1998 by Lokvir Kapoor, Pine Labs is a merchant payment solutions firm that enables businesses to accept online and offline digital retail transactions. The company powers over 250,000 merchants across over 675,000 merchant network touchpoints in India and Southeast Asia.

Pine Labs serves prominent large, mid-sized and small merchants across Asia and the Middle East, including Apple, Starbucks Corp, McDonald's Corp and more. It is planning on hitting the public market soon, and filed for a initial public offering (IPO) in the US in January this year. The company is reportedly planning to raise half a billion dollars from the public market, at a valuation of $6-7 billion.

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