IPO-Bound Pine Labs Onboards Former Avendus Exec Sameer Kamath As CFO

IPO-Bound Pine Labs Onboards Former Avendus Executive Sameer Kamath As CFO

SUMMARY

Kamath will be responsible for building global finance strategy, accounting and maintaining investor relations across the Pine Labs group

Prior to this, he served as the group CFO at Avendus Capital and Motilal Oswal Financial Services

Pine Labs filed the draft papers for its INR 2,600 Cr public listing with the market regulator SEBI in June

IPO-bound Pine Labs has appointed former Avendus Capital group chief financial officer and executive director Sameer Kamath as its CFO to manage the company’s financial strategies.

Kamath will be responsible for building global finance strategy, accounting and maintaining investor relations across the Pine Labs group.

This appointment comes on the back of Kamath ending his eight year long stint at Avendus Capital, where he was responsible for financial management, strategy, risk and compliance.

Prior to that, he also worked as the group CFO at Motilal Oswal Financial Services from 2006 to 2017.

Last month, Pine Labs-owned fintech startup Setu appointed former Razorpay executive Prashanth Nimmagada as chief technology officer (CTO).

Pine Labs filed the draft papers for its INR 2,600 Cr public listing with the market regulator SEBI in June. Its backers including Mastercard, Peak XV Partners, Macritchie Investments, Paypal, cofounder Lokvir Kapoor, among others, are likely to sell their stake as a part of this IPO.

While the company is waiting for SEBI’s approval, it is also considering raising a pre-IPO round of INR 520 Cr. Notably, former Peak XV executive’s VC firm Kenro Capital is looking to buy a stake in the IPO-bound fintech company.

In 2022, Pine Labs last raised $50 Mn from PE company Vitruvian Partners at a valuation of slightly more than $5 Bn.

The company is planning to deploy INR 870 Cr out of its IPO funds in repayment or prepayment of borrowing. It is also looking to invest INR 760 Cr in its IT assets, expand its cloud infrastructure, and procure digital checkout points.

Founded in 1988 by Lokvir Kapoor, Rajul Garg and Tarun Upadhyay, Pine Labs originally offered card-based payment solutions for the retail petroleum industry, but later expanded its focus to the broader retail sector, becoming a leading provider of point-of-sale (PoS) technology.

On the financial front, Pine Labs turned profitable in the first nine months of FY25 (9M FY25). It reported a net profit of INR 26.1 Cr in the period under review, against the loss of INR 151.6 Cr in the same period last fiscal.