Pine Labs eyeing for IPO in less than a year: CEO Amrish Rau

The chief executive of Indian fintech firm Pine Labs, Amrish Rau has announced that the company is considering an initial public offering in as little as a year. The fintech company has made its foray into the online payments space that it sees as a multi-billion dollar opportunity.

Pine Labs offers services and tools such as inventory management and payment terminals to merchants across Asia and the Middle East. It has venture firm Sequoia Capital, Singapore state investor Temasek, and U.S. firms PayPal and Mastercard among its investors.

The company is headquartered on the outskirts of New Delhi and was valued at $3.5 billion after its closed a $600 million funding round in July. It has launched three online products, including a payments gateway and a software development kit for smartphones under the name 'Plural'.

"We are at a stage where we will want to look at an IPO option in the next 12 months' time," CEO Amrish Rau said on Thursday, declining to specify what valuation it was eyeing.

Indian stock markets have hit an all-time high this year, which has seen many tech startups vying to list publicly. It all started with Food delivery firm Zomato that kicked off the startup listing earlier this year, while several others are preparing for an IPO.

"In the next 18 months time I see this (online business) to be a $25 billion opportunity (annually) just for Pine Labs," Rau said. "We have an opportunity where we can potentially double our volumes in the next two-and-a-half years' time."

The company was founded by three engineers in 1998 to provide retail automation solutions to petroleum companies. It widened its payments services to merchants in the early 2000s.