Fave just announced its recent acquisition by Pine Labs, an Indian merchant commerce platform, for RM185 million.
With this acquisition, Pine Labs is hoping that Indian consumers will be able to use the Fave app to save across 500,000 merchant network points powered by the fintech unicorn across 3,700 cities in India.
Pine Labs is a cloud-based platform that provides a wide range of payment acceptances with merchant commerce solutions like inventory management and customer relationship management.
They cater to merchants of all sizes and its stored value platform includes issuing, processing, and distributing digital gift cards for corporate customers. Their key investors include Mastercard, PayPal, and Temasek.
“India has the digital advantage with a young demography, a growing aspirational middle class with rising disposable income and an increasing digital savviness. We are confident that the APAC e-payments landscape will continue to achieve exponential growth in the coming decade,” shared Joel Neoh, founder of Fave, in a press release.
CEO of Pine Labs, B. Amrish Rau praised Fave when pointing out why they partnered with the latter, “Consumers have tremendous choices in their payment types. They want to be sure that they save on every transaction.”
“Fave helps consumers apply their best rewards, coupons, gift cards and cashbacks on all transactions in a seamless manner. Joel and the Fave team have built a loyal consumer base with their smooth checkout experience.”
In July 2020, Fave had also received an investment from Pine Labs to expand their cashless payment solutions to SMEs by integrating their QR code with Pine Labs’ terminals.
As of now, there will be no changes made to Fave’s leadership structure with the acquisition, but the founders will have their roles expanded to lead the overall consumer platform across Asia and hire over 100 new employees in Southeast Asia and India.
Fave’s investors will receive an all-cash payout whereas the founders and key Fave employees will receive both cash and Pine Labs shares.
Since 2016, Fave has helped 6 million consumers in SEA save over RM1.6 billion across 40,000 retailers. Out of that RM1.6 billion, Malaysians got to save RM369 million, about 23% of the total savings since Fave started till today.
The Malaysian startup is currently operating in 35 cities across Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, and this move into India would serve the brand well, considering the country’s massive population and the rapid adoption of digital technologies during the pandemic.
- You can read more of what we’ve written on Fave here.
- You can learn about Fave here, and Pine Labs here.
Featured Image Credit: Joel Neoh, co-founder and CEO of Fave
