BENGALURU: Point of sales machine maker
Pine Labs
has said it is acquiring online gift card company
Qwikcilver
at an enterprise value of $110 million. The acquisition has been funded from Pine Lab’s cash reserves and additional funding from existing investors, which includes payments giant
PayPal and venture capital firm
Sequoia Capital
India. The transaction will also push the valuation of Pine Labs to over $1 billion.
The deal will mark the exit of Qwikcilver investors — venture capital firms Accel and Helion Venture Partners, besides strategic backers Amazon and Sistema Asia Fund — who are being paid in cash. Early investors Helion and Accel have made over 5-6 times capital invested in Qwikcilver, which has raised about $20 million till now.
The deal includes partial liquidity for over 100 of 350 Qwikcilver employees who hold stock options in the company. Started in 2006, Qwikcilver had a majority market share in the gift card market with annualised gross transaction value of $1.5 billion across India, Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Pine Labs CEO
Vicky Bindra
said the transaction is largely a cash one with “little bit” of equity for only the leadership team of Qwikcilver, which include co-founders Kumar
Sudarsan
and Pratap T P. Once closed, Qwikcilver CEO Sudarsan will join Pine Labs and report to Bindra.
As part of this acquisition, the combined gift solutions business for Pine Labs would house over 250 brands and retailers, and 1,500 enterprise customers. Prior to this, the company had started its gift solutions business under the name of Pine Perks. Pine Labs said it processes annualised payments of $20 billion.
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