Noida, India-based merchant payments and lending platform Pine Labs acquired fintech startup Setu. The deal was reported on June 23rd, 2022. Banglore, India-based startup Setu is an application programming interface (API) infrastructure operating in the fintech segment. The deal cost the fintech unicorn around USD 70 million – 75 million.
As a part of the deal, the founders of Setu will continue to lead the company independently. Meanwhile, around 90-100 employees of the team will also be retained.
Purpose of Acquisition by Pine Labs
The recent acquisition of Setu will help Pine Labs get access to Setu’s account aggregator framework. Setu’s tech stack eliminates the need for the company to have multiple integrations for a product or a feature.
The company looks forward to strengthening its diversified online payments and lending offerings. The fintech unicorn has plans to go for public listing in the United States.
This is Pine Labs’ third acquisition in 2022. Earlier in February 2022, it acquired online payment startup Qfix Infocomm. Two months later, Pine Labs bought a majority stake in payment solutions provider Mosambee.
What the Setu founder has to say
Sahil Kini, Co-founder and CEO at Setu, said, “We are excited with this investment coming from Pine Labs. At Setu, we are building some amazing products and enabling a future of consent-driven access to financial data. We believe democratization of technology will yield better results when it comes to making financial products accessible to all and therefore have our APIs open for the developer community. Pine Labs’ network of merchants and issuers coupled with our API integration prowess will help achieve great results in personal finance management, monitoring loans to predict default rates, credit underwriting, and several other areas.”
What the CEO of Pine Labs has to say
B Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, said, “Setu will make an incredible addition to the Pine Labs platform for a few reasons. Embedded financial services and open banking will be the way forward, and the embedded finance market value is expected to exceed USD 138 billion by 2026 as APIs intensify the competitive fintech landscape. Setu helps its customers, merchants, and brands build beautiful experiences so consumers can engage with payments and financial services on their terms. We are delighted to welcome the co-founders Nikhil and Sahil and their young and vibrant team to the Pine Labs family.”
What the Infosys founder has to say
Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and chairman of Infosys Technologies Limited, said, “I have seen both Sahil and Nikhil at close quarters earlier, at Aadhaar and UPI. The kind of infra Setu is building will be very important for India in the years to come, and I am happy that they are relentlessly moving towards that goal, and this partnership with Pine Labs will help them to accelerate. My best wishes to both Amrish and the team at Setu!”
About Setu
In 2018, Sahil Kini and Nikhil Kumar brought Setu into existence. It is a fintech startup with Account Aggregator partners (non-banking financial companies) operating under the NBFC-AA license granted by the Reserve Bank of India. It offers open APIs across four categories, i.e., bills, savings, credit, and payments. The firm also operates the open-source initiative D91 Labs. It helps to conduct research and aid fintech companies in complying with regulatory requirements.
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