Pine Labs Acquires Saluto Wellness’ Enterprise Platform To Bolster Rewards Offerings

Pine Labs on Monday (January 23) said it has acquired Bengaluru-based Saluto Wellness Private Limited’s proprietary enterprise platform to boost its issuing business under the Qwikcilver brand. However, the companies didn’t disclose the acquisition amount.

The acquisition will allow Pine Labs to strengthen its offerings across employee rewards and recognition, customer loyalty programs, and channel partner programs for medium and large enterprises, a statement said.

Incidentally, the fintech giant also acquired Qwickcilver in 2019 to foray into prepaid gift card solutions. Pine Labs merged the company into the parent company in September 2022. 

On the other hand, Saluto Wellness, founded by Siva Kumar and Anoop Nambiar in 2017, offers employee engagement, channel partner engagement, and customer engagement programs.

Kumar Sudarsan, president of issuing business at Pine Labs, said, “With Saluto’s platform, we expect to further enhance our leadership across enterprise rewards, recognition, incentive and engagement programs. Saluto’s multi-tenant, enterprise-grade offering will give us additional capabilities to complement our strengths.”

Sudarsan added that integrating Saluto’s solutions with Pine Labs’ offerings would help the fintech company deliver more programs to its existing enterprise clients.

Adding to the same, Saluto cofounder and CEO Kumar said, “Our enterprise solutions are today being used across diverse industry verticals and we are excited to become part of a fast-growing, progressive fintech like Pine Labs and together scale our business further.”

Once the integration is completed, the fintech giant would be able to offer more products and services in the field of gift cards, reward points and other enterprise-value solutions. Pine Labs competes with the likes of IPO-bound Zaggle, which has also built a full-stack solution centred around employee benefits, in the employee rewards space.

Several fintech majors have chosen the acquisition route to foray into the rewards segment. For instance, Razorpay acquired PoshVine in September 2022 to venture into the field which also has the presence of players like Advantage Club and EnKash. 

According to a report by Future Market Insights, the loyalty program market in India is expected to reach a size of $10.8 Bn by 2031, growing at a CAGR of around 15% during the next decade. Currently, the market stands at $3 Bn in size, with key banks, NBFCs, and fintech players competing in the field.